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INDICATIONS OF THE CREATOR. 



EXTE ACTS, 
BEAEING UPON THEOLOGY, 

FROM 

THE HISTORY AND THE PHILOSOPHY 

OF THE 

INDUCTIVE SCIENCES. 



By WILLIAM WHE WEILL, D.D., 

MASTER OF TRINITY COLLEGE, 
AND PROFESSOR OF MORAL THILOSOPHY IN THE 
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 



LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER, WEST STRAND. 



M.DCCC.XLV. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Dedication , v 

Preface vii 

ASTRONOMY. 

The Copernican System 1 

The Nebular Hypothesis 8 

PHYSIOLOGY. 

Recognition of Final Causes in Physiology 20 

The Plans of Animal Forms 22 

Use of Final Causes in Physiology 20 

Question of the Transmutation of Species 53 

Hypothesis of Progressive Tendencies 57 

GEOLOGY. 

4. 

The Question of Creation as related to Science 62 



iv 



CONTENTS. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY. 

PAGE 



The Idea of Final Causes 72 

PAL2ETI0L0GY, 

Nature of Palsetiology 90 

Doctrine of Catastrophes and of Uniformity 103 

Relation of Tradition to Palsetiology 123 

Of the Conception of a First Cause > 150 

Of the Supreme Cause 162 



DEDICATION. 



TO 

WILLIAM SMYTH, Esquire, 

PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY 
OF CAMBRIDGE. 

My dear Professor Smyth, 

I know that you have always felt a peculiar 
interest in the contemplation of Indications of the 
Creator, drawn from the Creation in which we live, 
and from the Philosophy which we are led to frame 
concerning it : and I think that you will be pleased 
to see a contribution to this train of thought offered 
at the present moment. It will be a gratification 
to me, if, in publishing it, I am allowed to inscribe 
it to you. 

One who, like myself, has for many years 
enjoyed your friendship, and witnessed your influ- 
ence in this University, may well rejoice at having 
an opportunity of offering an open tribute of admi- 
ration and regard to the virtues and kindly affections 



vi 



DEDICATION. 



by which we have so long profited; and of express- 
ing his gratitude for the pleasure and instruction 
you have so long diffused among us. And I am 
happy to be able to add that, now, the wider 
public also has, in your published Lectures, the 
means of judging of our obligations to you. All 
may there see that you have, throughout your 
labours, been zealous and consistent in inculcating 
those principles of justice and mutual forbearance, of 
moral purpose in political designs, and moderation 
in political action, which, so far as they prevail, make 
the world of human history a more visible represen- 
tation of the will of its Divine Ruler. 

That you may long enjoy the recollection of 
these your past benefits to us, and of our gratitude 
to you, is the cordial wish and prayer of, 

My dear Professor Smyth, 

Your affectionate Friend, 
W. WHEWELL. 



Trinity College, Cambridge, 
Feb. U, 1845. 



PEEFACE. 



The following Extracts are now published from 
a persuasion that they may be interesting to many 
persons who would be unlikely to read the larger 
works from which they are taken. The Philosophy 
of the Sciences is necessarily a series of somewhat 
abstruse dissertations, and is likely to be acceptable 
only to thoughtful students. The History of Science 
is a subject of a more popular character, yet when 
the history is carried through all the epochs of all 
the material sciences, probably but few will accom- 
pany the historian through a plan so extensive. 
But lessons of Natural Theology always find a large 
class of willing readers, when there is anything of 
novelty in their form. The reflections which the fol- 
lowing pages contain, being those which result from a 
review of the whole progress of science, and of the 
principles and processes which have been concerned 
in that progress, necessarily differ in many respects 
from those of other writers on Natural Theology. 



viii 



PREFACE. 



Perhaps, also, there may be some recommenda- 
tion of these Indications of the Creator in their 
being the result of researches and reasonings under- 
taken with no purpose of bringing such indications 
into view, but with objects of quite another kind. 
For when an author writes with a theological con- 
clusion set before him from the first, as that to 
which he must conduct his argument, there may 
arise a suspicion of a defect of candour and com- 
prehensiveness in what he writes. It may be sup- 
posed that he will strain or evade anything that points 
away from his predetermined end. But a narrative 
of the whole History of Science, and an analysis of 
the processes by which sciences have been formed, 
are undertakings too large, and their course too 
rigidly determined by their plan, to allow them to be 
drawn aside by partial and irrelevant considerations. 
The passages now extracted as having a Theological 
bearing will be seen, on reference, to flow naturally 
from the trains of thought with which they are 
combined in the original works. 

The main points to which these extracts refer 
are the Indications of Design in the Creator, and 
of a Supernatural Origin of the World; and, as con- 



PREFACE. 



ix 



nected with this latter point, the consistency of the 
Inductive with the Revealed History of the World. 
I have not attempted to combine the Extracts into 
a system, but have given them in the order in 
which they occur in the original works. I have 
added a short extract from another work, on the 
subject of the Nebular Hypothesis, bearing on the 
same questions. 

The questions which belong to Natural Theology 
are, in substance, the same from age to age; but 
they change their aspect with every advance or 
supposed advance in the Inductive Sciences. I have 
(p. 94) endeavoured to shew the assertion to be 
quite baseless, that, as science advances, final causes 
recede before it, and disappear one after the other. 
I have also, I trust, made it appear, by a survey of 
the whole history of one great science, Physiology, 
that in that science the Doctrine of Final Causes 
has been not only consistent with the successive 
steps of discovery, but has been the great instrument 
of every step of discovery from Galen to Cuvier. 

I have further attempted to explain that the 
modern doctrine of Unity of Plan in different kinds 
of animals does not at all necessarily contradict the 



X 



PREFACE. 



Doctrine of Final Causes : that Morphology is not 
necessarily inconsistent with Teleology. But I have 
also had to shew that, in modern times, the two 
doctrines have been put in opposition to each other. 
The Morphologists have declared, on the ground of 
their peculiar views, that they could not allow them- 
selves to ascribe to the Creator any intention, (p. 
35.) And probably an impression as if the evi- 
dence of Design in the Creator were obscured and 
weakened, is generally produced by the first aspect of 
morphological doctrines, in minds eager for new views, 
and yet led, by their own want of the discoverer's 
power, to borrow their new views from others. 

I have already ventured to express an opinion* 
that Inductive Minds, those which have been able to 
discover Laws of Nature, have also commonly been 
ready to believe in an Intelligent Author of Nature ; 
while Deductive Minds, those which have employed 
themselves in tracing the consequences of Laws 
discovered by others, have been willing to rest in 
Laws, without looking beyond to an Author of 
Laws. I have taken the liberty also (p. 45) to 



* Bridgewaier Treatise, Book in. Ch. v. and vi. 



PREFACE. 



xi 



apply this remark to the case of the opposition 
between Teleology and Morphology ; and have re- 
marked that Cuvier, the great Zoological Discoverer 
of our time, was a firm believer in Creative De- 
sign, notwithstanding the arguments of the Mor- 
phologists who controverted such doctrines. I have, 
in the following pages, so fully discussed this sub- 
ject, that it would be superfluous to add anything 
here, if it were not that, as I have already said, 
morphological views have a peculiar tendency to 
appear unfavourable to the belief of final causes, in 
minds to which they are new. 

But as morphological views, when they are first 
presented, appear to some persons to dim the bright- 
ness of those proofs of Creative Design with which 
we are familiar; so, on the other hand, when a 
newly discovered instance of Creative Design is first 
made known to us by the zoological discoverer, it 
is impossible for most persons not to see in it a 
clear and strong indication of an Intelligent Crea- 
tor; however much this conviction may afterwards 
be obscured and confused by morphological generali- 
ties of expression. I have given an example of such 
a new evidence of design, in Mr. Owen's discoveries 



xii 



PREFACE. 



with regard to the process of suckling of the kan- 
garoo (p. 79). I do not think any one, becoming 
acquainted for the first time with the provisions 
for this purpose, as described by Mr. Owen, can 
help receiving the conviction which Mr. Owen ex- 
pressess, that this is an "irrefragable evidence of 
creative forethought." 

Mr. Owen, in this as in many other parts of 
his writings, is an instance, in addition to those 
which I have previously adduced, of the teleological 
turn of the Inductive Mind. It would be going too 
far to say, conversely, that those whose minds are 
not inductive have a bias towards morphology. But 
yet this would not be too much to say, if morpho- 
logy were very loosely understood. We should not 
be surprised at the morphologist coming to conclu- 
sions very different from those of the teleological 
discoverer, if that unity of plan which the morpho- 
logists assert, be made to consist in resemblances 
of the most heterogeneous and fantastical kind; if, 
for instance, plants were supposed to be analogous 
to the branching forms of crystallization ; or trees 
growing out of the ground to the electrical brush : 
if some animals were supposed to fall in with the 



PREFACE. 



xiii 



supposed unity of plan because they have abundant 
tail, and ornaments for the head in the form of 
tufts, crests, or horns, while others occupy an analo- 
gous position to these because they are of a soft 
and sluggish character and abundantly edible : if, 
again, we have a part of a classification in which 
some animals are placed because they have been 
denounced as impure, with other animals because 
they are wild and striped, and others because they 
have spines and prickles : if, finally, notions of 
moral judgments and of symbolism are introduced 
into natural history, and we are told of classes 
of animals which are symbolically types of evil. 
Morphology, pursued with such habits of mind, can- 
not, we should suppose from all the analogy which 
the history of science lends us, lead to any solid 
truth, either in natural history or in philosophy. 

There is one morphological doctrine of modern 
times which has attracted much notice, in conse- 
quence of its being imagined to offer a solution of the 
great difficulty of the uniformitarian theory in geology, 
namely, the appearance of new species and classes of 
animals as we proceed from the earlier to the later 
formations. The morphological doctrine of which I 



xiv 



PREFACE. 



speak is, that the kinds of animals may be arranged 
in a series ascending from lower to higher: and 
that each animal of a higher kind, in the progress 
of its embryo state, passes through states which are 
the final condition of the lower kind. The applica- 
tion of this morphological doctrine to geological dif- 
ficulty is this: that the higher kinds of animals, 
came later, and were developed from the lower kinds, 
which came earlier in the series, by new peculiar 
conditions, operating upon the embryo, and carrying 
it to a higher stage. Now in the apparent sim- 
plicity of this doctrine, thus enunciated in general 
terms, we have that which recommends it to those 
who accept such doctrines in their general shape. 
But the zoologist and the geologist, who can test 
its general assertions by the special facts with which 
their researches have made them acquainted, know 
that the facts do not agree with this doctrine. With- 
out going into detail on this subject, I venture to 
offer the following remarks. 

It is not at all agreed among eminent physiolo- 
gists*, that animals can be arranged in a series 



* I make these remarks on the authority of a physiological friend. 



PREFACE. 



XV 



ascending from lower to higher, such that each animal 
of a higher kind in its embryo state passes through 
the successive stages of the lower kinds; the cha- 
racters of these stages being (in the asserted doctrine) 
taken from the brain and the heart, and man being 
the highest point of the series. For such physio- 
logists assert, that the brain of the human embryo 
does not resemble, at any period, however early, the 
brain of any Mollusk or of any Articulate, which 
are two of the lower stages. It never passes through 
a stage comparable or analogous to a permanent con- 
dition of the same organ in any Invertebrate Animal. 
And in like manner the spinal cord in the human 
vertebrae at no period agrees with the corresponding 
part of the lower kinds of animals. The moment 
it becomes visible in the human embryo, it is entirely 
dorsal in position; while in Mollusks and Articu- 
lates a great part, or nearly the whole, is ventral. 
The same is true of the heart, or center of the 
vascular system, which has always a different rela- 
tive position to the great nervous center in the Human 
Embryo from what it has in any Articulate Animal, 
and in most Mollusks. 

Again ; the order of lower and higher stages of 



xvi 



PREFACE. 



developement of the human embryo, does not agree 
with the successive stages of animal life at successive 
periods of the earth's history as disclosed by geology. 
For even if we were to admit, what has not been 
proved, that the lowest kind of animal developement, 
which has been termed polygastric monads, exist in 
the earliest fossiliferous rocks, these rocks also 
manifest the higher types of Echinodermal, Articu- 
late, and Molluscous Animals ; while the human 
germ, commencing with a form and vital properties 
analogous to those of the monad, passes from the 
monad stage at once to the Vertebrate, and never 
enters or typifies the Radiate, the Articulate, or the 
Molluscous series of organic forms : whereas these 
forms of Invertebrates have preceded the Vertebrate 
forms on the earth's surface according to the best 
evidence disclosed by geology. 

Moreover in the Vertebrate, as well as in the 
Invertebrate part of the animal series, the asserted 
order fails. It has been pointed out by others*, that 
in order to produce the asserted accordance between 
the order of zoological developement and geological 



* Parker's Magazine, Feb. 1845, p. 102. 



PREFACE. 



xvii 



succession, geological facts are misrepresented in the 
most flagrant manner. For Vertebrate animals do 
exist in the Silurian rocks, from which the asserted 
law excludes them. Again ; if we are to have a geolo- 
gical period eminently characterized by Saurians, it 
must be that of the lias and oolites, and not that of 
the new red sandstone, as asserted in the hypothetical 
scheme ; while one of the Saurians which most ap- 
proaches the mammalian character, has recently been 
found in a formation below those in which the more 
ordinary Saurian forms occur. Again ; birds, which 
the new law places in the oolitic group, have left their 
traces on the earlier formation of the new red sand- 
stone. The new law finds geological epochs correspond- 
ing to some of the orders of quadrupeds, namely the 
rodents, ruminants, digitigrades, and quadrumans ; 
but it gives no place to the other orders, which 
might claim one with equal reason, pachyderms, 
marsupials, plantigrades and edentates. Finally, the 
law requires the monkey to be placed in the newer 
tertiaries ; whereas their remains have been found in 
the older tertiaries of France, India, and England. 

Further, the doctrine of the developement of the 
kinds of animals from one kind to another by the 



xviii 



PREFACE. 



influence of external conditions, is contrary to the con- 
clusions of the most esteemed physiologists, as is 
stated in the following pages. This doctrine is 
coupled with the assertion of the origin of living 
beings without an egg or other living parent. This 
assertion is at variance with the latest and most 
careful, as well as with all preceding experiments, of 
eminent physiologists*. And the tenet that any 
animal can be advanced to a higher stage by a period 
of gestation prolonged beyond the usual time, is 
contrary to all fact. The advancement of the vital 
organs to more perfect stages of developement 
requires the stimulus of respiration and muscular 
action, for which birth is essential. Under these 
conditions, the organs of animals have been de- 
veloped beyond their usual state ; but, as is stated 
in the following pages, never to a stage beyond that 
which characterizes the species. 

I have hitherto spoken in general terms of the 
stages of animal organization, meaning by that, such 
stages as fish, lizard, bird, beast. And I have spoken 
as if there were, in the question before us, no 



* Owen's Lectures, 1843, p. 33. 



PREFACE. 



xix 



difficulty, except that of advancing from one of these 
stages to another. But in fact there have been and 
are existing on the earth many kinds of fish, many 
kinds of saurians, many of birds, many of beasts. 
These have the most various forms and habits, with 
an internal organization of each, which, though 
wonderful, is in a great measure intelligible, when 
considered as designed for the animal's support and 
perservation according to its habits. But to arrange 
all these kinds of animals, that is, the whole animal 
creation, in a series, as successive stages of one line 
of developements, or of any ramified line; and to 
make the form and the habits of each the result of 
the stage of developement at which the animal has 
arrived ; is a mode of speculating which is the opposite 
of that which all successful zoological speculation has 

j followed, and may be expected to lead to opposite 

I results. 

The same imperfection in the evidence would be 
found, if we were to examine, in other subjects as 
well as in zoology, the asserted law of the identity 
}f the stages of natural developement of the faculties, 
iscending from beast to man, with the probable his- 
tory of mankind. For instance, the view of the 



XX 



PKEFACE. 



speech of man as of the same nature with the signs 
by which animals express their feelings and purposes, 
is a view which leaves out of sight the essential 
character of language. For the essential nature of 
language consists, not in its expressing particular 
feelings and purposes, but in its expressing thoughts 
and things in a general manner. Words express 
abstract thoughts, each of which may be applied to 
innumerable particular objects ; and Human Reason 
can deal with thoughts so abstracted, and by means 
of them, can express Truth, which it is her peculiar 
privilege to contemplate. There are, in animals, no 
germs of this power of a! traction, this apprehension 
of abstract and general Truth. The Instinct of ani- 
mals cannot become the Reason of man, by any pro- 
cess of developement. We cannot unfold the mind 
of a spider or a bee into the mind of a geometer. 

On the other subjects to which the Extracts refer, 
it does not appear necessary to add anything to what 
is there said. The opinions there expressed have 
been for some time before the world ; and are such 
as, I trust, can give just offence to no one. 

Trinity College, Cambridge, 
Feb. 14, 1845. 



EXTRACTS, 
Sfc. 



ASTBONOMY. 



THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 

[About a.d. 1500, Copernicus had satisfied himself 
of the truth of the Heliocentric Theory, according 
to which the planets, and the earth as one of them, 
revolve round the sun as the center of their motions. 
His book De Rewlu&mibus Orbium Celestium was 
published in 1543, tJae ar of his death. In 1610 
Galileo, having invented a telescope, discovered Jupi- 
ter's satellites and the moon-like phases of Venus ; 
and these discoveries supplied additional arguments 
for the truth of the Copernican system. This system 
Galileo afterwards defended in his writings, which 
were on that account condemned as heretical by the 
Inquisition.] 

* The doctrines promulgated by Copernicus ex- 
cited no visible alarm among the theologians of his 
own time; we may assign as a reason for this, 



* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book v. Chap. Hi. Sect. 4. 

1 



2 



ASTRONOMY. 



that those who were disposed to assert the sway of 
authority in all matters of belief, had not yet been 
roused and ruffled by the aggressions of innovators 
in philosophy and religion, as they soon afterwards 
were. Probably, also, we ought to take into account 
the different temper and circumstances of the ultra- 
montane and Italian learned men. The latter, living 
under the immediate shadow of the papal chair, 
were necessarily less bold in their speculations, and 
less open in their promulgation of any opinions which 
might have a taint of heresy. This influence ope- 
rated less strongly in Poland and Germany ; and we 
find no evidence which leads us to deny to these 
countries the glory of having received the Coper- 
nican system of the world, from the first, with satis- 
faction, and without bigoted opposition. The great 
religious reform which had its rise in Germany about 
the time of the promulgation of the Copernican 
system, showed sufficiently that that was the land 
where opinions would assert their freedom ; and 
where authority could not, with prudence, urge 
superfluous claims. 

But in Italy the church entertained the persua- 
sion that her authority could not be upheld at all, 
without maintaining it to be supreme on all points. 
The spirit of dogmatism of the middle ages had 
descended upon the ecclesiastical institutions of the 
seventeenth century; and in consistency with that 



THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 



s 



spirit, it was criminal to disturb received doctrines, 
or to separate philosophy from religion. The tenet 
of the earth being at rest in the center of the 
universe, was not only a part of the established 
school-philosophy, but was also, it was conceived, 
sanctioned by Scripture. The Copernican system, 
therefore, so far as it came into view, was looked 
at with suspicion and aversion. But though this 
system is afterwards, in the official condemnation of 
it, spoken of as "entertained by many," it never came 
under the notice of the spiritual judges in any con- 
spicuous manner, till it had been illustrated by Gali- 
leo's discoveries, and recommended by his writings. 

The story of the condemnation of Galileo by 
the Inquisition, for asserting the motion of the 
earth, and of his formal renunciation of this doc- 
trine in the presence of his judges, has been so 
often told, that I need not here repeat the details. 
It rather belongs to our purpose to consider what 
lessons may be gathered from it with regard to 
the progress of science. 

One reflection which occurs is, that both Galileo's 
behaviour and that of his judges, appear to disclose 
some Italian traits of character. The assumption 
of supreme authority in all matters of opinion, an 
assumption unsuited to the powers and condition 
of man, had led, it would seem, to a kind of arti- 
ficial state of compromise, in which men's published 

1—2 



4 



ASTRONOMY. 



opinions were treated as a point of decorum only, 
the truth being left out of consideration. Thus 
Galileo seems to have expected that the flimsiest 
veil of professed submission in his belief would 
enable his arguments in favour of the Copernican 
doctrine to pass unvisited ; and the inquisitors were 
satisfied with a renunciation which they could not 
believe to be sincere. This artificial state, again, 
was probably one occasion of the furtive mode of 
insinuating his doctrines, so much employed by Gali- 
leo, which some of his historians admire as subtle 
irony, and others blame as insincerity. Nor do we 
see anything to lead us to believe that Galileo was 
not at all times ready to make such submissions as 
the spiritual tribunals required ; although undoubt- 
edly he was also very desirous of promoting the 
cause of what he conceived to be philosophical truth. 
The same absence of earnestness appears on the 
other side, in the courtesy and indulgence with which, 
as is now almost universally allowed, Galileo was 
treated throughout the course of the proceedings 
against him. For his being confined in the dun- 
geons of the Inquisition, as his lot has sometimes 
been described, appears to have consisted principally 
in his being placed under some slight restrictions, 
first, in the house of Nicolini, the ambassador of his 
own sovereign, the Duke of Tuscany, and afterwards 
in the country-seat of Archbishop Piccolomini, one 



THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 



5 



of his own warmest friends. It appears to be not 
going too far to suppose that the extravagant as- 
sumptions of the church of Rome, which it was 
impossible sincerely to allow, and necessary to evade 
by artifice, generated in the philosophers of Italy 
an acuteness and subtlety, but also a suppleness and 
servility very different from the vigorous independent 
habits of thought of Germany and England. 

But there remains something more to be attended 
to in the case of Galileo ; for though the See of 
Rome might exaggerate the claims of religious autho- 
rity, there is a question of no small real difficulty, 
which the progress of science often brings into notice, 
as it did then. The revelation on which our religion 
is founded, seems to declare, or to take for granted, 
opinions on points on which science also gives her 
decision ; and we then come to this dilemma, — that 
doctrines, established by a scientific use of reason, 
may seem to contradict the declarations of reve- 
lation according to our view of its meaning; — and 
yet, that we cannot, in consistency with our reli- 
gious views, make reason a judge of the truth of 
revealed doctrines. In the case of astronomy, on 
which Galileo was called in question, the general 
sense of cultivated and sober-minded men has long 
ago drawn the distinction between religious and 
physical tenets which is necessary to resolve this 
dilemma. On this point, it is reasonably held, 



6 



ASTRONOMY. 



that the phrases which are employed in Scripture 
respecting astronomical facts, are not to be made 
use of to guide our scientific opinions ; they may 
be supposed to answer their end if they fall in 
with common notions, and are thus effectually sub- 
servient to the moral and religious import of reve- 
lation. But the establishment of this distinction 
was not accomplished without long and distressing 
controversies. Nor, if we wish to include all cases 
in which the same dilemma may again come into 
play, is it easy to lay down an adequate canon 
for the purpose. For we can hardly foresee, be- 
forehand, what part of the past history of the 
universe may eventually be found to come within 
the domain of science ; or what bearing the tenets, 
which science establishes, may have upon our view 
of the providential and revealed government of the 
world. But without attempting here to generalise 
on this subject, there are two reflections which may 
be worth our notice : they are supported by what 
took place in reference to astronomy on the oc- 
casion of which we are speaking ; and may, at other 
periods, be applicable to other sciences. 

In the first place, the meaning which any gene- 
ration puts upon the phrases of Scripture, depends, 
more than is at first sight supposed, upon the re- 
ceived philosophy of the time. Hence, while men 
imagine that they are contending for revelation. 



THE COPERNICAN SYSTEM. 



7 



they are, in fact, contending for their own inter- 
pretation of revelation, unconsciously adapted to 
what they believe to be rationally probable. And 
the new interpretation, which the new philosophy 
requires, and which appears to the older school to 
be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, 
is accepted by their successors without the danger- 
ous results which were apprehended. When the 
language of Scripture, invested with its new mean- 
ing, has become familiar to men, it is found that 
the ideas which it calls up, are quite as reconcile- 
able as the former ones were, with the soundest 
religious views. And the world then looks back 
with surprise at the error of those who thought 
that the essence of revelation was involved in their 
own arbitrary version of some collateral circum- 
stance. At the present day we can hardly con- 
ceive how reasonable men should have imagined 
that religious reflections on the stability of the 
earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries 
which revolve round it, would be interfered with 
by its being acknowledged that this rest and mo- 
tion are apparent only. 

In the next place, we may observe that those 
who thus adhere tenaciously to the traditionary or 
arbitrary mode of understanding Scriptural expres- 
sions of physical events, are always strongly con- 
demned by succeeding generations. They are looked 



s 



ASTRONOMY. 



upon with contempt by the world at large, who 
cannot enter into the obsolete difficulties with which 
they encumbered themselves ; and with pity by the 
more considerate and serious, who know how much 
sagacity and right-mindedness are requisite for the 
conduct of philosophers and religious men on such 
occasions ; but who know also how weak and vain 
is the attempt to get rid of the difficulty by merely 
denouncing the new tenets as inconsistent with re- 
ligious belief, and by visiting the promulgators of 
them with severity such as the state of opinions 
and institutions may allow. The prosecutors of 
Galileo are still held up to the scorn and aversion 
of mankind ; although, as we have seen, they did 
not act till it seemed that their position compelled 
them to do so, and then proceeded with all the 
gentleness and moderation which were compatible 
with judicial forms. 

THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 

[* Laplace has proved that the state of the solar 
system is stable: that is, the ellipses which the 
planets describe will always remain nearly circular, 
and the axis of revolution of the earth will never 
deviate much from its present position. He has 



* Bridgewater Treatise. Book n. Ghap. iii. 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



9 



shown also that this stability depends on the fact 
that the planets all move in the same direction, in 
orbits of small excentricity, and slightly inclined to 
each other. He has moreover given a mathematical 
proof that this fact is not accidental. Hence we 
may regard this arrangement as the result of de- 
sign, and as intended to secure the stability of the 
system.] 

*We have referred to Laplace, as a profound ma- 
thematician, who has strongly expressed the opinion, 
that the arrangement by which the stability of the 
solar system is secured is not the result of chance ; 
that " a primitive cause has directed the planetary 
motions." This author, however, having arrived, 
as we have done, at this conviction, does not draw 
from it the conclusion which has appeared to us so 
irresistible, that " the admirable arrangement of the 
solar system cannot but be the work of an intelli- 
gent and most powerful being." He quotes these 
expressions, which are those of Newton, and points 
at them as instances where that great philosopher 
had deviated from the method of true philosophy. 
He himself proposes an hypothesis concerning the 
nature of the primitive came of which he conceives 
the existence to be thus probable : and this hypo- 



* Bridgewater Treatise. Book u. Chap. vii. 

1—5 



10 



ASTRONOMY. 



thesis, on account of the facts which it attempts 
to combine, the view of the universe which it pre- 
sents, and the eminence of the person by whom it 
is propounded, deserves our notice. 

1. Laplace conjectures that in the original con- 
dition of the solar system, the sun revolved upon 
his axis, surrounded by an atmosphere which, in 
virtue of an excessive heat, extended far beyond 
the orbits of all the planets, the planets as yet 
having no existence. The heat gradually diminished, 
and as the solar atmosphere contracted by cooling, 
the rapidity of its rotation increased by the laws of 
rotatory motion, and an exterior zone of vapour 
was detached from the rest, the central attraction 
being no longer able to overcome the increased cen- 
trifugal force. This zone of vapour might in some 
cases retain its form, as we see it in Saturn's ring ; 
but more usually the ring of vapour would break 
into several masses, and these would generally coa- 
lesce into one mass, which would revolve about the 
sun. Such portions of the solar atmosphere, aban- 
doned successively at different distances, would form 
" planets in the state of vapour." These masses 
of vapour, it appears from mechanical considera- 
tions, would have each its rotatory motion, and as 
the cooling of the vapour still went on, would each 
produce a planet, which might have satellites and 
rings, formed from the planet in the same manner 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



II 



as the planets were formed from the atmosphere of 
the sun. 

It may easily be conceived that all the primary 
motions of a system so produced would be nearly 
circular, nearly in the plane of the original equator 
of the solar rotation, and in the direction of that 
rotation. Reasons are offered also to show that 
the motions of the satellites thus produced and the 
motions of rotation of the planets must be in the 
same direction. And thus it is held that the hypo- 
thesis accounts for the most remarkable circum- 
stances in the structure of the solar system : namely, 
the motions of the planets in the same direction, 
and almost in the same plane ; the motions of the 
satellites in the same direction as those of the 
planets ; the motions of rotation of these different 
bodies still in the same direction as the other mo- 
tions, and in planes not much different ; the small 
excentricity of the orbits of the planets, upon which 
condition, along with some of the preceding ones, 
the stability of the system depends ; and the posi- 
tion of the source of light and heat in the center 
of the system. 

It is not necessary for the purpose, nor suitable 
to the plan of the present treatise, to examine, on 
physical grounds, the probability of the above hypo- 
thesis. It is proposed by its author, with great 
diffidence, as a conjecture only. We might, there- 



12 



ASTRONOMY. 



fore, very reasonably put off all discussion of the 
bearings of this opinion upon our views of the go- 
vernment of the world, till the opinion itself should 
have assumed a less indistinct and precarious form. 
It can be no charge against our doctrines, that 
there is a difficulty in reconciling with them arbi- 
trary guesses and half-formed theories. We shall, 
however, make a few observations upon this nebular 
hypothesis, as it may be termed. 

2. If we grant, for a moment, the hypothesis, 
it by no means proves that the solar system was 
formed without the intervention of intelligence and 
design. It only transfers our view of the skill 
exercised, and the means employed, to another part 
of the work. For, how came the sun and its atmo- 
sphere to have such materials, such motions, such 
a constitution, that these consequences followed from 
their primordial condition? How came the parent 
vapour thus to be capable of coherence, separation, 
contraction, solidification? How came the laws of 
its motion, attraction, repulsion, condensation, to be 
so fixed, as to lead to a beautiful and harmonious 
system in the end I How came it to be neither 
too fluid nor too tenacious, to contract neither too 
quickly nor too slowly, for the successive formation 
of the several planetary bodies £ How came that 
substance, which at one time was a luminous vapour, 
to be at a subsequent period, solids and fluids of 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



IS 



many various kinds? What but design and intel- 
ligence prepared and tempered this previously exist- 
ing element, so that it should by its natural changes 
produce such an orderly system? 

And if in this way we suppose a planet to be 
produced, what sort of a body would it be ? — some- 
thing, it may be presumed, resembling a large me- 
teoric stone. How comes this mass to be covered 
with motion and organization, with life and happi- 
ness? What primitive cause stocked it with plants 
and animals, and produced all the wonderful and 
subtle contrivances which we find in their structure, 
all the wide and profound mutual dependences which 
we trace in their economy ? Was man, with his 
thought and feeling, his powers and hopes, his will 
and conscience, also produced as an ultimate result 
of the condensation of the solar atmosphere ? Ex- 
cept we allow a prior purpose and intelligence pre- 
siding over this material u primitive cause,'" how 
irreconcilable is it with the evidence which crowds 
in upon us on every side ! 

3. In the next place, we may observe concern- 
ing this hypothesis, that it carries us back to the 
beginning of the present system of things ; but that 
it is impossible for our reason to stop at the point 
thus presented to it. The sun, the earth, the 
planets, the moons were brought into their present 
order out of a previous state, and, as is supposed in 



14 



ASTRONOMY. 



the theory, by the natural operation of laws. But 
how came that previous state to exist? We are 
compelled to suppose that it, in like manner, was 
educed from a still prior state of things ; and this, 
again, must have been the result of a condition prior 
still. Nor is it possible for us to find, in the tenets 
of the nebular hypothesis, any restingplace or satis- 
faction for the mind. The same reasoning faculty, 
which seeks for the origin of the present system of 
things, and is capable of assenting to, or dissenting 
from the hypothesis propounded by Laplace as an 
answer to this inquiry, is necessarily led to seek, in 
the same manner, for the origin of any previous 
system of things, out of which the present may ap- 
pear to have grown: and must pursue this train of 
enquiries unremittingly, so long as the answer which 
it receives describes a mere assemblage of matter 
and motion ; since it would be to contradict the 
laws of matter and the nature of motion, to sup- 
pose such an assemblage to be the first condition. 

The reflection just stated, may be illustrated 
by the further consideration of the Nebular Hypo- 
thesis. This opinion refers us, for the origin of the 
solar system, to a sun surrounded with an atmo- 
sphere of enormously elevated temperature, revolv- 
ing and cooling. But as we ascend to a still earlier 
period, what state of things are we to suppose? — 
a still higher temperature, a still more diffused 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



15 



atmosphere. Laplace conceives that, in its primi- 
tive state, the sun consisted in a diffused luminosity 
so as to resemble those nebulae among the fixed 
stars, which are seen by the aid of the telescope, 
and which exhibit a nucleus, more or less brilliant, 
surrounded by a cloudy brightness. " This anterior 
state was itself preceded by other states, in which 
the nebulous matter was more and more diffuse, the 
nucleus being less and less luminous. We arrive," 
Laplace says, "in this manner, at a nebulosity so 
diffuse, that its existence could scarcely be sus- 
pected." 

" Such is," he adds, " in fact, the first state of 
the nebulae which Herschel carefully observed by 
means of his powerful telescopes. He traced the 
progress of condensation, not indeed on one nebula, 
for this progress can only become perceptible to us 
in the course of centuries ; but in the assemblage of 
nebulae ; much in the same manner as in a large 
forest we may trace the growth of trees among the 
examples of different ages which stand side by side. 
He saw in the first place the nebulous matter dis- 
persed in patches, in the different parts of the sky. 
He saw in some of these patches this matter feebly 
condensed round one or more faint nuclei. In other 
nebulae, these nuclei were brighter in proportion to 
the surrounding nebulosity ; when by a further con- 
densation the atmosphere of each nucleus becomes 



16 



ASTRONOMY. 



separate from the others, the result is multiple ne- 
bulous stars, formed by brilliant nuclei very near 
each other, and each surrounded by an atmosphere : 
sometimes the nebulous matter condensing in a uni- 
form manner has produced nebulous systems which 
are called planetary. Finally, a still greater degree 
of condensation transforms all these nebulous sys- 
tems into stars. The nebulae, classed according to 
this philosophical view, indicate with extreme pro- 
bability their future transformation into stars, and 
the anterior nebulous condition of the stars which 
now exist." 

It appears then that the highest point to which 
this series of conjectures can conduct us, is "an 
extremely diffused nebulosity," attended, we may 
suppose, by a far higher degree of heat, than that 
which, at a later period of the hypothetical process, 
keeps all the materials of our earth and planets in 
a state of vapour. Now is it not impossible to avoid 
asking, whence was this light, this heat, this dif- 
fusion? How came the laws which such a state 
implies, to be already in existence ? Whether light 
and heat produce their effects by means of fluid 
vehicles or otherwise, they have complex and varied 
laws which indicate the existence of some subtle 
machinery for their action. When and how was this 
machinery constructed? Whence too that enor- 
mous expansive power which the nebulous matter 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



17 



is supposed to possess? And if, as would seem to 
be supposed in this doctrine, all the material ingre- 
dients of the earth existed in this diffuse nebulosity, 
either in the state of vapour, or in some state of 
still greater expansion, whence were they and their 
properties \ how came there to be of each simple 
substance which now enters into the composition of 
the universe, just so much and no more? Do we 
not, far more than ever, require an origin of this 
origin ? an explanation of this explanation ? What- 
ever may be the merits of the opinion as a physical 
hypothesis, with which we do not here meddle, can 
it for a moment prevent our looking beyond the 
hypothesis, to a First Cause, an Intelligent Author, 
an origin proceeding from free volition, not from 
material necessity I 

But again: let us ascend to the highest point 
of the hypothetical progression : let us suppose the 
nebulosity diffused throughout all space, so that its 
course of running into patches is not yet begun. 
How are we to suppose it distributed ? Is it equably 
diffused in every part I clearly not ; for if it were, 
what should cause it to gather into masses, so 
various in size, form and arrangement ? The sepa- 
ration of the nebulous matter into distinct nebulse 
implies necessarily some original inequality of dis- 
tribution ; some determining circumstances in its 
primitive condition. Whence were these circum- 



18 



ASTRONOMY. 



stances? this inequality? we are still compelled to 
seek some ulterior agency and power. 

Why must the primeval condition be one of 
change at all? Why should not the nebulous mat- 
ter be equably diffused throughout space, and con- 
tinue for ever in its state of equable diffusion, as it 
must do, from the absence of all cause to determine 
the time and manner of its separation ? why should 
this nebulous matter grow cooler and cooler? why 
should it not retain for ever the same degree of 
heat, whatever heat be? If heat be a fluid, if to 
cool be to part with its fluid, as many philosophers 
suppose, what becomes of the fluid heat of the nebu- 
lous matter, as the matter cools down ? Into what 
unoccupied region does it find its way ? 

Innumerable questions of the same kind might 
be asked, and the conclusion to be drawn is, that 
every new physical theory which we include in our 
view of the universe, involves us in new difficulties 
and perplexities, if we try to erect it into an ulti- 
mate and final account of the existence and arrange- 
ment of the world in which we live. With the 
evidence of such theories, considered as scientific 
generalizations of ascertained facts, with their claims 
to a place in our natural philosophy, we have here 
nothing to do. But if they are put forwards as a 
disclosure of the ultimate cause of that which occurs, 
and as superseding the necessity of looking further 



THE NEBULAR HYPOTHESIS. 



19 



or higher; if they claim a place in our Natural 
Theology, as well as our Natural Philosophy ; we 
conceive that their pretensions will not bear a mo- 
ment's examination. 

Leaving then to other persons and to future ages 
to decide upon the scientific merits of the nebular 
hypothesis, we conceive that the final fate of this 
opinion can not, in sound reason, affect at all the 
view which we have been endeavouring to illustrate ; 
— the view of the universe as the work of a wise 
and good Creator. Let it be supposed that the 
point to which this hypothesis leads us, is the ulti- 
mate point of physical science ; that the farthest 
glimpse we can obtain of the material universe by 
our natural faculties, shows it to us occupied by a 
boundless abyss of luminous matter ; still we ask, 
how space came to be thus occupied, how matter 
came to be thus luminous ? If we establish by phy- 
sical proofs, that the first fact which can be traced 
in the history of the world, is that "there was 
light ;" we shall still be led, even by our natural rea- 
son, to suppose that before this could occur, "God 
said, Let there be light." 



20 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 

* There is one idea which the researches of the phy- 
siologist and the anatomist so constantly force upon 
him, that he cannot help assuming it as one of the 
guides of his speculations ; I mean, the idea of a 
purpose, or, as it is called in Aristotelian phrase, a 
final cause, in the arrangements of the animal 
frame. It is impossible to doubt that the motive 
nerves run along the limbs, in order that they may 
convey to the muscles the impulses of the will ; and 
that the muscles are attached to the bones, in order 
that they may move and support them. This con- 
viction prevails so steadily among anatomists, that 
even when the use of any part is altogether un- 
known, it is still taken for granted that it has 
some use. The developement of this conviction, — 
of a purpose in the parts of animals, — of a func- 
tion to which each portion of the organization is 
subservient, — contributed greatly to the progress 
of physiology; for it constantly urged men for- 
wards in their researches respecting each organ, 
till some definite view of its purpose was obtained. 



* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvn. Chap. i. Sect. 2. 



RECOGNITION OF FINAL CAUSES. 



21 



The assumption of hypothetical final causes in phy- 
sics may have been, as Bacon asserts it to have 
been, prejudicial to science ; but the assumption 
of unknown final causes in physiology, has given 
rise to the science. The two branches of specula- 
tion, Physics and Physiology, were equally led, by 
every new phenomenon, to ask their question, 
f Why ?" But, in the former case, "why" meant 
"through what cause?" in the latter, "for what 
end?" And though it may be possible to intro- 
duce into physiology the doctrine of efficient causes, 
such a step can never obliterate the obligations 
which the science owes to the pervading concep- 
tion of a purpose contained in all organization. 

This conception makes its appearance very early. 
Indeed, without any special study of our struc- 
ture, the thought, that we are fearfully and won- 
derfully made, forces itself upon men, with a mys- 
terious impressiveness, as a suggestion of our Maker. 
| In this bearing, the thought is developed to a con- 
i siderable extent in the well-known passage in Xeno- 
| nophons Conversations of Socrates. Nor did it 
ever lose its hold on sober-minded and instructed 
men. The Epicureans, indeed, held that the eye 
was not made for seeing, nor the ear for hearing; 
and Asclepiades, whom we have already mentioned 
as an impudent pretender, adopted this wild dogma. 
Such assertions required no labour. " It is easy," 



22 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



says Galen, " for people like Asclepiades, when 
they come to any difficulty, to say that nature 
has worked to no purpose." The great anato- 
mist himself pursues his subject in a very different 
temper. In a well-known passage, he breaks out 
into an enthusiastic scorn of the folly of the atheis- 
tical notions. " Try," he says, " if you can ima- 
gine a shoe made with half the skill which appears 
in the skin of the foot." Some one had spoken of 
a structure of the human body which he would have 
preferred to that which it now has. " See," Galen 
exclaims, after pointing out the absurdity of the 
imaginary scheme, u see what brutishness there is 
in this wish. But if I were to spend more w T ords 
on such cattle, reasonable men might blame me 
for desecrating my work, which I regard as a reli 
gious hymn in honour of the Creator." 

THE PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 

* Animals were divided by Lamarck into vertebrate 
and invertebrate ; and the general analogies of all 
vertebrate animals are easily made manifest. But 
with regard to other animals, the point is far from 
clear. Cuvier was the first to give a really philo- 
sophical view of the animal world in reference to 
the plan on which each animal is constructed. 

* History of the Inductive Sciences. Book xvn. Chap. vii. Sect. 2, 3. 



PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 



23 



There are*, he says, four such plans; — four forms 
on which animals appear to have been modelled ; 
and of which the ullerior divisions, with whatever 
titles naturalists have decorated them, are only very 
slight modifications, founded on the developement 
or addition of some parts which do not produce 
any essential change in the plan. 

The four great branches of the animal world 
are the vertebrata, mollusca, articulata, radiata; and 
the differences of these are so important that a 
slight explanation of them may be permitted. 

The vertebrata are those animals which (as man 
and other sucklers, birds, fishes, lizards, frogs, ser- 
pents,) have a back-bone and a skull with lateral 
appendages, within which the viscera are included, 
and to which the muscles are attached. 

The mollusca, or soft animals, have no bony 
skeleton ; the muscles are attached to the skin, 
which often includes stony plates called shells ; such 
molluscs are shell-fish, others are cuttle-fish, and 
many pulpy sea-animals. 

The articulata consist of Crustacea, (lobsters, &c.,) 
insects, spiders, and annulose worms, which, like the 
other classes of this branch, consist of a head and 
a number of successive portions of the body jointed 
together, whence the name. 



* Regne Animal, p. 57. 



24 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



Finally, the radiata include the animals known 
under the name of zoophytes. In the preceding 
three branches, the organs of motion and of sense 
were distributed symmetrically on the two sides 
of an axis, so that the animal has a right and a 
left side. In the radiata the similar members ra- 
diate from the axis in a circular manner, like the 
petals of a regular flower. 

The whole value of such a classification cannot 
be understood without explaining its use in enabling 
us to give general descriptions, and general laws 
of the animal functions, of the classes which it in- 
cludes ; but in the present part of our work our 
business is to exhibit it as an exemplification of 
the reduction of animals to laws of symmetry. The 
bipartite symmetry of the form of vertebrate and 
articulate animals is obvious ; and the reduction of 
the various forms of such animals to a common 
type has been effected, by attention to their ana- 
tomy, in a manner which has satisfied those who 
have best studied the subject. The molluscs, es- 
pecially those in which the head disappears, as 
oysters, or those which are rolled into a spiral, 
as snails, have a less obvious symmetry, but here 
also we can apply certain general types. And the 
symmetry of the radiated zoophytes is of a na- 
ture quite different from all the rest, and approach- 
ing, as we have suggested, to the kind of sym- , 



PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 



25 



metry found in plants. Some naturalists have 
doubted whether* these zoophytes are not referrible 
to two types (acrita or polypes, and true radiata), 
rather than to one. 

Supposing this great step in Zoology, of which 
we have given an account, — the reduction of all 
animals to four types or plans, — to be quite secure, 
we are then led to ask whether any further advance 
is possible ; — whether several of these types can be 
referred to one common form by any wider effort 
of generalisation. On this question there has been 
a considerable difference of opinion. Geoffroy Saint- 
Hilairef, who had previously endeavoured to show 
that all vertebrate animals were constructed so ex- 
actly upon the same plan as to preserve the strictest 
analogy of parts in respect to their osteology, thought 
to extend this unity of plan by demonstrating, that 
the hard parts of crustaces and insects are still only 
modifications of the skeleton of higher animals, and 
that therefore the type of vertebrata must be made 
to include them also : — the segments of the articu- 
lata are held to be strictly analogous to the vertebrae 
of the higher animals, and thus the former live 
within their vertebral column in the same manner 
as the latter live without it. Attempts have even 
been made to reduce molluscous and vertebrate 



* Brit. Assoc. Rep. iv. 227, t Mr. Jenyns, Ibid. iv. 150. 

2 



26 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



animals to a community of type, as we shall see 
shortly. 

Another application of the principle, according 
to which creatures the most different are develope- 
ments of the same original type, may be discerned* 
in the doctrine, that the embryo of the higher forms 
of animal life passes by gradations through those 
forms which are permanent in inferior animals. 
Thus, according to this view, the human foetus 
assumes successively, the plan of the zoophyte, the 
worm, the fish, the turtle, the bird, the beast. But 
it has been well observed, that " in these analogies 
we look in vain for the precision which can alone 
support the inference that has been deduced-)- and 
that at each step, the higher embryo and the lower 
animal which it is supposed to resemble, differ in 
having each different organs suited to their respective 
destinations. 

Cuvier^: never assented to this view, nor to the 
attempts to refer the different divisions of his system 
to a common type. " He could not admit," says his 
biographer, " that the lungs or gills of the verte- 
brates are in the same connexion as the branchiae of 
molluscs and crustaces, which in the one are situated 
at the base of the feet, or fixed on the feet them- 



* Dr. Clark, Brit. Assoc. Report, iv. 113. t Dr. Clark, p. 114. 
t Laurillard, Elog. de Cuvier, p. 68. 



PLANS OF ANIMAL FORMS. 



27 



selves, and in the other often on the back or about 
the arms. He did not admit the analogy between 
the skeleton of the vertebrates and the skin of the 
articulates ; he could not believe that the tenia and 
the sepia were constructed on the same plan; that 
there was a similarity of composition between the 
bird and the echinus, the whale and the snail ; in 
spite of the skill with which some persons sought 
gradually to efface their discrepancies." 

Whether it may be possible to establish, among 
the four great divisions of the " Animal Kingdom," 
some analogies of a higher order than those which 
prevail within each division, I do not pretend to 
conjecture. If this can be done, it is clear that it 
must be by comparing the types of these divisions 
under their most general forms : and thus Cuvier's 
arrangement, so far as it is itself rightly founded 
on the unity of composition of each branch, is the 
surest step to the discovery of a unity pervading 
and uniting these branches. But though those who 
generalise surely, and those who generalise rapidly, 
may travel in the same direction, they soon separate 
so widely, that they appear to move from each other. 
The partisans of a universal " unity of composition " 
of animals, accused Cuvier of being too inert in fol- 
lowing the progress of physiological and zoological 
science. Borrowing their illustration from the poli- 
tical parties of the times, they asserted that he 

2—2 



28 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



belonged to the science of the resistance, not to the 
science of the movement. Such a charge is highly 
honourable to him; for no one acquainted with the 
history of zoology can doubt that he had a great 
share in the impulse by which the " movement " was 
occasioned ; or that he himself made a large advance 
with it ; and it was because he was so poised by the 
vast mass of his knowledge, so temperate in his love 
of doubtful generalisations, that he was not swept 
on in the wilder part of the stream. To such a 
charge, moderate reformers, who appreciate the value 
of the good which exists, though they try to make it 
better, and who know the knowledge, thoughtful- 
ness, and caution, which are needful in such a task, 
are naturally exposed. For us, who can only decide 
on such a subject by the general analogies of the his- 
tory of science, it may suffice to say, that it appears 
doubtful whether the fundamental conceptions of 
affinity, analogy, transition, and developement, have 
yet been fixed in the minds of physiologists with 
sufficient firmness and clearness, or unfolded with 
sufficient consistency and generality, to make it 
likely that any great additional step of this kind 
can for some time be made. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



29 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES IN PHYSIOLOGY. 

Doctrine of Unity of Plan. — We have repeatedly 
seen, in the course of our historical view of physio- 
logy, that those who have studied the structure of 
animals and plants, have had a conviction forced 
upon them, that the organs are constructed and 
combined in subservience to the life and functions 
of the whole. The parts have a purpose, as well as 
a law; — we can trace final causes, as well as laws 
of causation. This principle is peculiar to physio- 
logy; and it might naturally be expected that, in 
the progress of the science, it would come under 
special consideration. This accordingly has happen- 
ed; and the principle has been drawn into a pro- 
minent position by the struggle of two antagonist 
schools of physiologists. On the one hand, it has 
been maintained that this doctrine of final causes 
is altogether unphilosophical, and requires to be 
replaced by a more comprehensive and profound 
principle : on the other hand, it is asserted that the 
doctrine is not only true, but that, in our own time, 
it has been fixed and developed so as to become 
the instrument of some of the most important dis- 
coveries which have been made. Of the views of 
these two schools we must endeavour to give some 
account. 

The disciples of the former of the two schools 
express their tenets by the phrases unity of plan, 



30 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



unity of composition ; and the more detailed deve- 
lopement of these doctrines has been termed the 
Theory of Analogues, by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who 
claims this theory as his own creation. According 
to this theory, the structure and functions of animals 
are to be studied by the guide of their analogy only; 
our attention is to be turned, not to the fitness of 
the organization for any end of life or action, but to 
its resemblance to other organizations by which it is 
gradually derived from the original type. 

According to the rival view of this subject, we 
must not assume, and cannot establish, that the plan 
of all animals is the same, or their composition 
similar. The existence "of a single and universal 
system of analogies in the construction of all ani- 
mals is entirely unproved, and therefore cannot be 
made our guide in the study of their properties. 
On the other hand, the plan of the animal, the 
purpose of its organization in the support of its 
life, the necessity of the functions to its existence, 
are truths which are irresistibly apparent, and which 
may therefore be safely taken as the bases of our 
reasonings. This view has been put forwards as 
the doctrine of the conditions of existence: it may 
also be described as the principle of a purpose in 
organization ; the structure being considered as 
having the function for its end. We must say a 
few words on each of these views. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



31 



It had been pointed out by Cuvier, as we have 
seen in the last chapter, that the animal kingdom 
may be divided into four great branches ; in each of 
which the plan of the animal is different, namely, 
vertebrata, articulata, molhisca, radiata. Now the 
question naturally occurs, is there really no resem- 
blance of construction in these different classes ? It 
was maintained by some, that there is such a 
resemblance. In 1820*, M. Audouin, a young na- 
turalist of Paris, endeavoured to fill up the chasm 
which separates insects from other animals ; and by 
examining carefully the portions which compose the 
solid frame-work of insects, and following them 
through their various transformations in different 
classes, he conceived that he found relations of posi- 
tion and function, and often of number and form, 
which might be compared with the relations of the 
parts of the skeleton in vertebrate animals. He 
thought that the first segment of an insect, the head|, 
represents one of the three vertebrae which, accord- 
ing to Spix and others, compose the vertebrate 
head : the second segment of the insects, (the pro- 
thorax of Audouin,) is, according to M. Geoffroy, 
the second vertebra of the head of the vertebrata, 
and so on. Upon this speculation Cuvier^: does 
not give any decided opinion ; observing only, that 



Cuv, HiH. Sc. Nat. in. 422. t Ibid. 437. X Ibid. 441. 



32 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



even if false, it leads to active thought and useful 
research. 

But when an attempt was further made to iden- 
tify the plan of another branch of the animal world, 
the mollusca, with that of the vertebrata, the radical 
opposition between such views and those of Cuvier, 
broke out into an animated controversy. 

Two French anatomists, MM. Laurencet and 
Meyranx, presented to the Academy of Sciences, 
in 1830, a Memoir containing their views on the 
organization of molluscous animals ; and on the sepia 
or cuttle-fish in particular, as one of the most com- 
plete examples of such animals. These creatures, 
indeed, though thus placed in the same division with 
shell-fish of the most defective organization and 
obscure structure, are far from being scantily orga- 
nized. They have a brain*, often eyes, and these, 
in the animals of this class, (cephalopoda) are more 
complicated than in any vertebrates -f ; they have 
sometimes ears, salivary glands, multiple stomachs, 
a considerable liver, a bile, a complete double cir- 
culation provided with auricles and ventricles; in 
short, their vital activity is vigorous, and their senses 
are distinct. 

But still, though this organization, in the abun- 

* Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire denies this. Principes de Phil. Zoolo- 
gigue discutes en 1830, p. 68. 
t Ibid. p. 55. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



33 



dance and diversity of its parts, approaches that of 
vertebrate animals, it had not been considered as 
composed in the same manner, or arranged in the 
same order. Cuvier had always maintained that the 
plan of molluscs is not a continuation of the plan 
of vertebrates. 

MM. Laurencet and Meyranx, on the contrary, 
conceived that the sepia might be reduced to the 
type of a vertebrate creature, by considering the 
back-bone of the latter bent double backwards, so 
as to bring the root of the tail to the nape of the 
neck; the parts thus brought into contact being 
supposed to coalesce. By this mode of conception, 
these anatomists held that the viscera were placed 
in the same connexion as in the vertebrate type, and 
the functions exercised in an analogous manner. 

To decide on the reality of the analogy thus 
asserted, clearly belonged to the jurisdiction of the 
most eminent anatomists and physiologists. The 
Memoir was committed to Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire 
and Latreille, two eminent zoologists, in order to be 
reported on. Their report was extremely favour- 
able; and went almost to the length of adopting 
the views of the authors. 

Cuvier expressed, some dissatisfaction with this 
report on its being read*; and a short time after- 



* Phil. 7.ool. p. 36. 



34 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



wards *, represented Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire as having 
asserted that the new views of Laurencet and Mey- 
ranx refuted completely the notion of the great 
interval which exists between molluscous and verte- 
brate animals. Geoffroy protested against such an 
interpretation of his expressions ; but it soon ap- 
peared, by the controversial character which the dis- 
cussions on this and several other subjects assumed, 
that a real opposition of opinions was in action. 

Without attempting to explain the exact views 
of Geoffroy, (we may, perhaps, venture to say that 
they are hardly yet generally understood with suf- 
ficient distinctness to justify the mere historian of 
science in attempting such an explanation,) their 
general tendency may be sufficiently collected from 
what has been said ; and from the phrases in which 
his views are conveyed f. The principle of connexions, 
the elective affinities of organic elements, the equilibriza- 
tion of organs ; — such are the designations of the 
leading doctrines which are unfolded in the prelimi- 
nary discourse of his Anatomical Philosophy. Elec- 
tive affinities of organic elements are the forces by 
which the vital structures and varied forms of living 
things are produced ; and the principles of connexion 
and equilibrium of these forces- in the various, parts 
of the organization, prescribe limits and conditions 
to the variety and developement of such forms. 



* Phil. Zool. p. 50. 



t Ibid. p. 15. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



35 



The character and tendency of this philosophy 
will be, I think, much more clear, if we consider 
what it excludes and denies. It rejects altogether 
all conception of a plan and purpose in the organs 
of animals, as a principle which has determined their 
forms, or can be of use in directing our reasonings. 
"I take care," says Geofiroy*, "not to ascribe to 
God any intention." And when Cuvier speaks of 
the combination of organs in such order that they 
may be in consistence with the part which the animal 
has to play in nature ; his rival rejoins f, " I know 
nothing of animals which have to play a part in 
nature.'" Such a notion is, he holds, unphilosophical 
and dangerous. It is an abuse of final causes which 
makes the cause to be engendered by the effect. 
And to illustrate still further his own view, he says, 
" I have read concerning fishes, that because they 
live in a medium which resists more than air, their 
motive forces are calculated so as to give them the 
power of progression under those circumstances. 
By this mode of reasoning, you would say of a man 
who makes use of crutches, that he was originally 
destined to the misfortune of having a leg paralyzed 
or amputated. v> 



* "Je me garde de preter a Dieu aucune intention." Phil, 
fool. p. 10. 

t "Jene connais point d'animal qui doive jouer un vole dans 3a 
nature.' 1 p. 65. 



36 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



How far this doctrine of unity in the plan in 
animals is admissible or probable in physiology when 
kept within proper limits, that is, when not put in 
opposition to the doctrine of a purpose involved in 
the plan of animals, I do not pretend even to con- 
jecture. The question is one which appears to be 
at present deeply occupying the minds of the most 
learned and profound physiologists ; and such persons 
alone, adding to their knowledge and zeal, judicial 
sagacity and impartiality, can tell us what is the 
general tendency of the best researches on this 
subject*. But when the anatomist expresses such 
opinions, and defends them by such illustrations as 
those which I have just quoted |, we perceive that 
he quits the entrenchments of his superior science, 
in which he might have remained unassailable so 
long as the question was a professional one ; and 
the discussion is open to those who possess no pecu- 
liar knowledge of anatomy. We shall, therefore, 
venture to say a few words upon it. 



* So far as this doctrine is generally accepted among the best 
physiologists, we cannot doubt the propriety of Meckel's remarks, 
{Comparative Anatomy, 1821, Pref. p. xi.) that it cannot be truly 
asserted either to be new, or to be peculiarly due to Geoff'roy Saint- 
Hilaire. 

j- It is hardly worth while answering such illustrations, but I may 
remark, that the one quoted above, irrelevant and unbecoming as it is, 
tells altogether against its author. The fact that the wooden leg is of 
the same length as the other, proves, and would satisfy the most in- 
credulous man, that it was intended for walking. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



37 



Estimate of this Doctrine It has been so often 

repeated, and so generally allowed in modern times, 
that final causes ought not to be made our guides 
in natural philosophy, that a prejudice has been 
established against the introduction of any views to 
which this designation can be applied, into physical 
speculations. Yet, in fact, the assumption of an end 
or purpose in the structure of organized beings, 
appears to be an intellectual habit which no efforts 
can cast off. It has prevailed from the earliest to 
the latest ages of zoological research ; appears to 
be fastened upon us alike by our ignorance and our 
knowledge ; and has been formally accepted by so 
many great anatomists, that we cannot feel any 
scruple in believing the rejection of it to be a su- 
perstition of a false philosophy, and a result of the 
exaggeration of other principles which are supposed 
capable of superseding its use. And the doctrine of 
unity of plan of all animals, and the other principles 
associated with this doctrine, so far as they exclude 
the conviction of an intelligible scheme and a dis- 
coverable end, in the organization of animals, appear 
to be utterly erroneous. I will offer a few reasons 
for an opinion which may appear presumptuous in 
a writer who has only a general knowledge of the 
subject. 

1. In the first place, it appears to me that the 
argumentation on the case in question, the sepia, 



38 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



does by no means turn out to the advantage of the 
new hypothesis. The arguments in support of the 
hypothetical view of the structure of this mollusc 
were, that by this view the relative position of the 
parts was explained, and conformations which had 
appeared altogether anomalous, were reduced to 
rule ; for example, the beak, which had been sup- 
posed to be in a position the reverse of all other 
beaks, was shown, by the assumed posture, to have 
its upper mandible longer than the lower, and thus 
to be regularly placed. " But," says Cuvier*, "sup- 
posing the posture, in order that the side on which 
the funnel of the sepia is folded should be the back 
of the animal, considered as similar to a vertebrate, 
the brain with regard to the beak, and the oesopha- 
gus with regard to the liver, should have positions 
corresponding to those in vertebrates ; but the 
positions of these organs are exactly contrary to 
the hypothesis. How, then, can you say," he asks, 
" that the cephalopods and vertebrates have identity 
of composition, unity of composition, without using 
words in a sense entirely different from their com- 
mon meaning?" 

This argument appears to be exactly of the kind 
on which the value of the hypothesis must depend |. 



* G. S. H. Phil. Zool. p. 70. 

t I do not dwell on other arguments which were employed. It 
was given as a circumstance suggesting the supposed posture of the 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



39 



It is, therefore, interesting to see the reply made to 
it by the theorist. It is this : "I admit the facts 
here stated, but I deny that they lead to the notion 
of a different sort of animal composition. Molluscous 
animals had been placed too high in the zoological 
scale ; but if they are only the embryos of its 
lower stages, if they are only beings in which far 
fewer organs come into play, it does not follow that 
the organs are destitute of the relations which the 
power of successive generations may demand. The 
organ A will be in an unusual relation with the 
organ C, if B has not been produced ; — if a stop- 
page of the developement has fallen upon this latter 
organ, and has thus prevented its production. And 
thus," he says, " we see how we may have different 
arrangements, and diverse constructions as they ap- 
pear to the eye." 

It seems to me that such a concession as this 
entirely destroys the theory which it attempts to 
defend ; for what arrangement does the principle of 
unity of composition exclude, if it admits unusual, 
that is, various arrangements of some organs, ac- 

type, that in this way the back was coloured, and the belly was white. 
On this Cuvier observes, {Phil. Zool. p. 39, 68.) " I must say, that I 
do not know any naturalist so ignorant as to suppose that the back is 
determined by its dark colour, or even by its position when the animal 
is in motion ; they all know that the badger has a black belly and a 
white back ; that an infinity of other animals, especially among in- 
sects, are in the same case ; and that many fishes swim on their side, 
or with their belly upwards." 



40 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



companied by the total absence of others I Or how 
does this differ from Cuvier's mode of stating the 
conclusion, except in the introduction of certain 
arbitrary hypotheses of developement and stoppage. 
"I reduce the facts," Cuvier says, "to their true 
expression, by saying that cephalopods have several 
organs which are common to them and vertebrates, 
and which discharge the same offices ; but that these 
organs are in them differently distributed, and often 
constructed in a different manner ; and they are ac- 
companied by several other organs which vertebrates 
have not ; while these on the other hand have several 
which are wanting in cephalopods. 1 ' 

We shall see afterwards the general principles 
which Cuvier himself considered as the best guides 
in these reasonings. But I will first add a few 
words on the disposition of the school now under 
consideration, to reject all assumption of an end. 

2. That the parts of the bodies of animals are 
made in order to discharge their respective offices, is 
a conviction which we cannot believe to be other- 
wise than an irremovable principle of the philosophy 
of organization, when we see the manner in which 
it has constantly forced itself upon the minds of 
zoologists and anatomists in all ages; not only as 
an inference, but as a guide whose indications they 
could not help following. I have already noticed 
expressions of this conviction in some of the prin- 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



41 



cipal persons who occur in the history of physiology, 
as Galen and Harvey. I might add many more, but 
I will content myself with adducing a contemporary 
of GeoffroyX whose testimony is the more remark- 
able, because he obviously shares with his country- 
man in the common prejudice against the use of 
final causes. " I consider," he says, in speaking 
of the provisions for the reproduction of animals*, 
f. with the great Bacon, the philosophy of final 
causes as sterile ; but I have elsewhere acknowledged 
that it was very difficult for the most cautious man 
never to have recourse to them in his explanations." 
After the survey which we have had to take of the 
history of physiology, we cannot but see that the 
assumption of final causes in this branch of science 
is so far from being sterile, that it has had a large 
share in every discovery which is included in the 
existing mass of real knowledge. The use of every 
organ has been discovered by starting from the 
assumption that it must have some use. The doc- 
trine of the circulation of the blood was, as we have 
seen, clearly and professedly due to the persuasion 
of a purpose in the circulatory apparatus. The 
study of comparative anatomy is the study of the 
adaptation of animal structures to their purposes. 
And we shall soon have to shew that this conception 

* Cabanis, Rapports die Physique et du Morale de V Homme, 
i. 290. 



42 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



of final causes has, in our own times, been so far 
from barren, that it has, in the hands of Cuvier and 
others, enabled us to become intimately acquainted 
with vast departments of zoology to which we have 
no other mode of access. It has placed before us 
in a complete state, animals, of which, for thousands 
of years, only a few fragments have existed, and 
which differ widely from all existing animals ; and it 
has given birth, or at least has given the greatest 
part of its importance and interest, to a science 
which forms one of the brightest parts of the modern 
progress of knowledge. It is, therefore, very far 
from being a vague and empty assertion, when we 
say that final causes are a real and indestructible 
element in zoological philosophy ; and that the ex- 
clusion of them, as attempted by the school of which 
we speak, is a fundamental and most mischievous 
error. 

3. Thus, though the physiologist may persuade 
himself that' he ought not to refer to final causes, 
we find that, practically, he cannot help it ; and 
that the event shows that his practical habit is right 
and well-founded. But he may still cling to the 
speculative difficulties and doubts in which such sub- 
jects may be involved by a priori considerations. 
He may say, as Saint-Hilaire does say*, "I ascribe 



* Phil. Zool. p. 10. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



4-3 



no intention to God, for I mistrust the feeble powers 
of my reason. I observe facts merely, and go no 
further. I only pretend to the character of the his- 
torian of what is" " I cannot make nature an in- 
telligent being who does nothing in vain, who acts 
by the shortest mode, who does all for the best." 

I am not going to enter at any length into this 
subject, which, thus considered, is metaphysical and 
theological, rather than physiological. If any one 
maintain, as some have maintained, that no mani- 
festation of means apparently used for ends in nature, 
can prove the existence of design in the Author of 
nature, this is not the place to refute such an 
opinion in its general form. But I think it may 
be worth while to show, that even those who in- 
cline to such an opinion, still cannot resist the 
necessity which compels men to assume, in organized 
beings, the existence of an end. 

Among the philosophers who have referred our 
conviction of the being of God to our moral nature, 
and have denied the possibility of demonstration on 
(mere physical grounds, Kant is perhaps the most 
eminent. Yet he has asserted the reality of such a 
\ principle of physiology as we are now maintaining 
I in the most emphatic manner. Indeed, this assump- 
tion of an end makes his very definition of an orga- 
nized being. "An organized product of nature is 
jthat in which all the parts are mutually ends and 



44 



PHYSIOLOGY. 





means*." And this, he says, is a universal and neces- 
sary maxim. He adds, " It is well known that the 
anatomisers of plants and animals, in order to inves- 
tigate their structure, and to obtain an insight into 
the grounds why and to what end such parts, why 
such a situation and connexion of the parts, and 
exactly such an internal form, come before them, 
assume, as indispensably necessary, this maxim, that 
in such a creature nothing is in vain, and proceed 
upon it in the same way in which in general natural 
philosophy we proceed upon the principle that nothing 
happens by chance. In fact, they can as little free 
themselves from this teleological principle as from 
the general physical one; for as, on omitting the 
latter, no experience would be possible, so on omit- 
ting the former principle, no clue could exist for the 
observation of a kind of natural objects which can 
be considered teleologically under the conception of 
natural ends." 

Even if the reader should not follow the reason- 
ing of this celebrated philosopher, he will still have 
no difficulty in seeing that he asserts, in the most 
distinct manner, that which is denied by the author 
whom we have before quoted, the propriety and 
necessity of assuming the existence of an end as our 
guide in the study of animal organization. 



* Urtheilskraft, p. 296. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES, 



45 



4. It appears to me, therefore, that whether we 
judge from the arguments, the results, the practice 
of physiologists, their speculative opinions, or those 
of the philosophers of a wider field, we are led to 
the same conviction, that in the organized world we 
may and must adopt the belief, that organization 
exists for its purpose, and that the apprehension of 
the purpose may guide us in seeing the meaning of 
the organization. And I now proceed to shew how 
this principle has been brought into additional clear- 
ness and use by Cuvier. 

In doing this, I may, perhaps, be allowed to 
make a reflection of a kind somewhat different from 
the preceding remarks, though suggested by them. 
In another work*, I endeavoured to shew that those 
who have been discoverers in science have generally 
had minds, the disposition of which was to believe 
in an intelligent Maker of the universe ; and that 
the scientific speculations which produced an oppo- 
site tendency, were generally those which, though 
they might deal familiarly with known physical truths, 
and conjecture boldly with regard to the unknown, 
j did not add to the number of solid generalisations. 
In order to judge whether this remark is distinctively 
j applicable in the case now considered, I should have 



* Bridgewater Treatise, Book in. Chap. vii. and viii. On Induc- 
tive Habits of Thought, and On Deductive Habits of Thought. 



46 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



to estimate Cuvier in comparison with other physi- 
ologists of his time, which I do not presume to do 
But I may observe, that he is allowed by all to have 
established, on an indestructible basis, many of the 
most important generalisations which zoology now 
contains; and the principal defect which his critics 
have pointed out, has been, that he did not generalise 
still more widely and boldly. It appears, therefore, 
that he cannot but be placed among the great dis- 
coverers in the studies which he pursued ; and this 
being the case, those who look with pleasure on the 
tendency of the thoughts of the greatest men to 
an Intelligence far higher than their own, must be 
gratified to find that he was an example of this 
tendency ; and that the acknowledgement of a crea- 
tive purpose, as well as a creative power, not only 
entered into his belief, but made an indispensable 
and prominent part of his philosophy. 

Doctrine of Final Causes. — We have now to 
describe more in detail the doctrine which Cuvier 
maintained in opposition to such opinions as we have 
been speaking of ; and which, in his way of apply- 
ing it, we look upon as a material advance in phy- 
siological knowledge, and therefore give to it a 
distinct place in our history. "Zoology has," he 
says*, in the outset of his Regne Animal, " a prin- 



* Rtgne An. p. 6. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



47 



ciple of reasoning which is peculiar to it, and which 
it employs with advantage on many occasions : this 
is the principle of the conditions of existence, vulgarly 
called the principle of final causes. As nothing can 
exist if it do not combine all the conditions which 
render its existence possible, the different parts of 
each being must be co-ordinated in such a manner 
as to render the total being possible, not only in 
itself, but in its relations to those which surround 
it ; and the analysis of these conditions often leads 
to general laws, as clearly demonstrated as those 
which result from calculation or from experience." 

This is the enunciation of his leading principle 
in general terms. To our ascribing it to him, some 
may object, on the ground of its being self-evident in 
its nature*, and having been very anciently applied. 
But to this we reply, that the principle must be 
considered as a real discovery, in the hands of him 
who first shows how to make it an instrument of 
other discoveries. It is true in other cases as well as 
in this, that some vague apprehension of true general 
principles, such as a priori considerations can supply, 
has long preceded the knowledge of them as real 
and verified laws. In such a way it was seen, 
before Newton, that the motions of the planets 
must result from attraction ; and before Dufay and 



* Swainson, Study of JVat. Hist p. 85. 



48 



PHYSIOLOGY'. 



Franklin, it was held that electrical actions must 
result from a fluid. Cuvier's merit consisted, not 
in seeing that an animal cannot exist without com- 
bining all the conditions of its existence ; but in 
perceiving that this truth may be taken as a guide 
in our researches concerning animals ; — that the 
mode of their existence may be collected from one 
part of their structure, and then applied to inter- 
pret or detect another part. He went on the sup- 
position not only that animal forms have some plan, 
some purpose, but that they have an intelligible plan, 
a discoverable purpose. He proceeded in his inves- 
tigations like the decipherer of a manuscript, who 
makes out his alphabet from one part of the context, 
and then applies it to read the rest. The proof 
that his principle was something very different from 
an identical proposition, is to be found in the fact, 
that it enabled him to understand and arrange the 
structures of animals with unprecedented clearness 
and completeness of order ; and to restore the forms 
of the extinct animals which are found in the rocks 
of the earth, in a manner which has been universally 
assented to as irresistibly convincing. These results 
cannot flow from a trifling or barren principle ; and 
they show us that if we are disposed to form such 
a judgment of Cuvier's doctrine, it must be because 
we do not fully apprehend its import. 

To illustrate this, we need only quote the state- 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



49 



ment which he makes, and the uses to which he 
applies it. Thus in the Introduction to his great 
work on " Fossil Remains," he says, " Every orga- 
nized being forms an entire system of its own, all 
the parts of which mutually correspond, and con- 
cur to produce a certain definite purpose by reci- 
procal reaction, or by combining to the same end. 
Hence none of these separate parts can change their 
forms, without a corresponding change in the other 
parts of the same animal ; and consequently each 
of these parts, taken separately, indicates all the 
other parts to which it has belonged. Thus, if the 
viscera of an animal are so organized as only to be 
fitted for the digestion of recent flesh, it is also 
requisite that the jaws should be so constructed as 
to fit them for devouring prey; the claws must be 
constructed for seizing and tearing it in pieces ; the 
teeth for cutting and dividing its flesh ; the entire 
system of the limbs or organs of motion for pursuing 
and overtaking it; and the organs of sense for dis- 
covering it at a distance. Nature must also have 
endowed the brain of the animal with instincts suf- 
ficient for concealing itself, and for laying plans to 
catch its necessary victims By such considera- 
tions he has been able to reconstruct the whole of 



* Theory of the Earth, p. 90. 

3 



50 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



many animals of which parts only were given ; — 
a positive result, which shows both the reality and 
the value of the truth on which he wrought. 

Another great example, equally showing the 
immense importance of this principle in Cuvier's 
hands, is the reform which, by means of it, he intro- 
duced into the classification of animals. Here again 
we may quote the view he himself has given* of the 
character of his own improvements. In studying 
the physiology of the natural classes of vertebrate 
animals, he found, he says, " in the respective quan- 
tity of their respiration, the reason of the quantity 
of their motion, and consequently of the kind of 
locomotion. This, again, furnishes the reason for 
the forms of their skeletons and muscles ; and the 
energy of their senses, and the force of their diges- 
tion, are in a necessary proportion to the same quan- 
tity. Thus a division which had till then been 
established, like that of vegetables, only upon obser- 
vation, was found to rest upon causes appreciable, 
and applicable to other cases." Accordingly, he 
applied this view to invertebrates ; — examined the 
modifications which take place in their organs of 
circulation, respiration, and sensation ; and having 
calculated the necessary results of these modifica- 



* Hist. Sc. Nat. i, 293. 



USE OF FINAL CAUSES. 



51 



tions, he deduced from it a new division of those 
animals, in which they are arranged according to 
their true relations. 

Such have been some of the results of the prin- 
ciple of the conditions of existence, as applied by its 
great assertor. 

It is clear, indeed, that such a principle could 
acquire its practical value only in the hands of a 
person intimately acquainted with anatomical details, 
with the functions of the organs, and with their 
variety in different animals. It is only by means 
of such nutriment that the embryo truth could be 
developed into a vast tree of science. But it is 
not the less clear, that Cuvier's immense knowledge 
and great powers of thought led to their results, 
only by being employed under the guidance of this 
master-principle : and, therefore, we may justly 
consider it as the distinctive feature of his specu- 
lations, and follow it with a gratified eye, as the 
thread of gold which runs through, connects, and 
enriches his zoological researches : — gives them a 
deeper interest and a higher value than can belong 
to any view of the organical sciences, in which the 
very essence of organization is kept out of view. 

The real philosopher, who knows that all the 
kinds of truth are intimately connected, and that 
all the best hopes and encouragements which are 
granted to our nature must be consistent with truth, 

3—2 



52 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



will be satisfied and confirmed, rather than surprised 
and disturbed, thus to find the natural sciences 
leading him to the borders of a higher region. To 
him it will appear natural and reasonable, that, 
after journeying so long among the beautiful and 
orderly laws by which the universe is governed, we 
find ourselves at last approaching to a source of 
order and law, and intellectual beauty : — that, after 
venturing into the region of life and feeling and 
will, we are led to believe the fountain of life and 
will, not to be itself unintelligent and dead, but 
to be a living mind, a power which aims as well as 
acts. To us this doctrine appears like the natural 
cadence of the tones to which we have so long been 
listening ; and without such a final strain our ears 
would have been left craving and unsatisfied. We 
have been lingering long amid the harmonies of 
law and symmetry, constancy and developement ; 
and these notes, though their music was sweet and 
deep, must too often have sounded to the ear of 
our moral nature, as vague and unmeaning melodies, 
floating in the air arouud us, but conveying no 
definite thought, moulded into no intelligible an- 
nouncement. But one passage which we have again 
and again caught by snatches, though sometimes 
interrupted and lost, at last swells in our ears full, 
clear, and decided ; and the religious " Hymn in 
honour of the Creator,' 1 to which Galen so gladly 



TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 53 

lent his voice, and in which the best physiologists 
of succeeding times have ever joined, is filled into 
a richer and deeper harmony by the greatest philo- 
sophers of these later days, and will roll on here- 
after, the "perpetual song" of the temple of science. 

QUESTION OF THE TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 

* Besides the fortunes of individual plants and 
animals, of which the geologist has traces brought 
under his notice, there is another class of questions, 
of great interest, but of great difficulty ; — the for- 
tunes of each species. In what manner do species 
which were not, begin to be ? as geology teaches us 
that they many times have done ; and, as even our 
own reasonings convince us they must have done, at 
least in the case of the species among which we 
live. 

We here obviously place before us, as a subject 
of research, the creation of living things ; — a sub- 
ject shrouded in mystery, and not to be approached 
without reverence. But though we may conceive, 
that, on this subject, we are not to seek our be- 
lief from science alone, we shall find, it is asserted, 
within the limits of allowable and unavoidable specu- 
lation, many curious and important problems which 



Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xvm. Chap. vi. Sect. 2, 3, 4. 



54 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



may well employ our physiological skill. For exam- 
ple, we may ask : — how we are to recognise the spe- 
cies which were originally created distinct? — whether 
the population of the earth at one geological epoch 
could pass to the form which it has at a succeed- 
ing period, by the agency of natural causes alone? — 
and if not, what other account we can give of the 
succession which we find to have taken place ? 

The most remarkable point in the attempts to 
answer these and the like questions, is the contro- 
versy between the advocates and the opponents of 
the doctrine of the transmutation of species. This 
question is, even from its mere physiological im- 
port, one of great interest ; and the interest is 
much enhanced by our geological researches, which 
again bring the question before us in a striking- 
form, and on a gigantic scale. We shall, therefore, 
briefly state the point at issue. 

We see that animals and plants may, by the 
influence of breeding, and of external agents operat- 
ing upon their constitution, be greatly modified, so 
as to give rise to varieties and races different from 
what before existed. How different, for instance, 
is one kind and breed of dog from another ! The 
question, then, is, whether organized beings can, 
by the mere working of natural causes, pass from 
the type of one species to that of another ? whether 
the wolf may, by domestication, become the dog? 



TRANSMUTATION OF SPECIES. 



55 



whether the ourang-outang may, by the power of 
external circumstances, be brought within the circle 
of the human species I And the dilemma in which 
we are placed is this ; — that if species are not 
thus interchangeable, we must suppose the fluc- 
tuations of which each species is capable, and which 
are apparently indefinite, to be bounded by rigor- 
ous limits ; whereas, if we allow such a transmuta- 
tion of species, we abandon that belief in the adap- 
tation of the structure of every creature to its 
destined mode of being, which not only most per- 
sons would give up with repugnance, but which, 
as we have seen, has constantly and irresistibly 
impressed itself on the minds of the best naturalists, 
as the true view of the order of the world. 

The question, of the limited or unlimited ex- 
tent of the modifications of animals and plants, has 
received full and careful consideration from emi- 
nent physiologists : and in their opinions we find, 
I think, an indisputable preponderance to that deci- 
sion which rejects the transmutation of species, and 
which accepts the former side of the dilemma; 
namely, that the changes of which each species is 
susceptible, though difficult to define in words, are 
limited in fact. It is extremely interesting and 
satisfactory thus to receive an answer in which 
we can confide, to inquiries seemingly so wide and 
bold as those which this subject involves. I refer 



56 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



to Mr. Lyell, Dr. Prichard, Mr. Lawrence, and 
others, for the history of the discussion, and for 
the grounds of the decision; and I shall quote 
very briefly the main points and conclusions to which 
the inquiry has led*. 

It may be considered, then, as determined by 
the over-balance of physiological authority, that 
there is a capacity in all species to accommodate 
themselves, to a certain extent, to a change of ex- 
ternal circumstances ; this extent varying greatly 
according to the species. There may thus arise 
changes of appearance or structure, and some of 
these changes are transmissible to the offspring : 
but the mutations thus superinduced are governed 
by constant laws, and confined within certain limits. 
Indefinite divergence from the original type is not 
possible ; and the extreme limit of possible variation 
may usually be reached in a short period of time : 
in short, species have a real existence in nature, and a 
transmutation from one to another does not exist. 

Thus, for example, Cuvier remarks |, that not- 
withstanding all the differences of size, appearance, 
and habits, which we find in the dogs of various 
races and countries, and though we have (in the 
Egyptian mummies) skeletons of this animal as it 
existed three thousand years ago, the relation of 



Lyell, B. n. c. iv. 



t Ossem. Foss. Disc. Pre/, p. 61. 



PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 



57 



the bones to each other remains essentially the 
same ; and, with all the varieties of their shape 
and size, there are characters which resist all the 
influences both of external nature, of human inter- 
course, and of time. 

HYPOTHESIS OF PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES, 

Within certain limits, however, as we have said, 
external circumstances produce changes in the forms 
of organized beings. The causes of change, and 
the laws and limits of their effects, as they obtain 
in the existing state of the organic creation, are 
in the highest degree interesting. And, as has 
been already intimated, the knowledge thus obtain- 
ed, has been applied with a view to explain the 
origin of the existing population of the world, 
and the succession of its past conditions. But 
those who have attempted such an explanation, 
have found it necessary to assume certain addi- 
tional laws, in order to enable themselves to de- 
duce, from the tenet of the transmutability of the 
species of organized beings, such a state of things 
as we see about us, and such a succession of states 
as is evidenced by geological researches. And here, 
again, we are brought to questions of which we must 
seek the answers from the most profound physiolo- 
gists. Now referring, as before, to « those which 

3—5 



58 PHYSIOLOGY. 

appear to be the best authorities, it is found that 
these additional positive laws are still more inad- 
missible than the primary assumption of indefinite 
capacity of change. For example, in order to ac- 
count, on this hypothesis, for the seeming adapta- 
tion of the endowments of animals to their wants, 
it is held that the endowments are the result ! 
of the wants ; . — that the swiftness of the antelope, 
the claws and teeth of the lion, the trunk of the 
elephant, the long neck of the giraffe, have been 
produced by a certain plastic character in the con- 
stitution of animals, operated upon, for a long course 
of ages, by the attempts which these animals made 
to attain objects which their previous organization 
did not place within their reach. In this way, it 
is maintained that the most striking attributes of 
animals, those which apparently imply most clearly 
the providing skill of their Creator, have been 
brought forth by the long-repeated efforts of the jj 
creatures to attain the object of their desires ; thus 
animals with the highest endowments have been 
gradually developed from ancestral forms of the most 
limited organization: thus fish, birds, and beasts, 
have grown from small gelatinous bodies, "petits 
corps gelatineux," possessing some obscure principle 
of life, and the capacity of developement ; and thus 
man himself, with all his intellectual and moral, 
as well as physical privileges, has been derived from 



PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 



59 



some creature of the ape or baboon tribe, urged 
by a constant tendency to improve, or at least to 
alter his condition. 

As we have said, in order to arrive, even hypo- 
thetically, at this result, it is necessary to assume, 
besides a mere capacity for change, other positive 
and active principles, some of which we may notice. 
Thus, we must have, as the direct productions of 
nature on this hypothesis, certain monads or rough 
draughts, the primary rudiments of plants and ani- 
mals. We must have, in these, a constant tendency 
to progressive improvement, to the attainment of 
higher powers and faculties than they possess ; which 
tendency is again perpetually modified and controlled 
by the force of external circumstances. And in order 
to account for the simultaneous existence of animals 
in every stage of this imaginary progress, we must 
suppose that nature is compelled to be constantly 
producing those elementary beings, from which all 
animals are successively developed. 

I need not stay to point out how extremely arbi- 
trary every part of this scheme is ; and how com- 
plex its machinery would be, even if it did account 
for the facts. It may be sufficient to observe, as 
others have done*, that the capacity of change, and 
of being influenced by external circumstances, such 



Lyell, Book in. Chap. i. p. 413. 



60 



PHYSIOLOGY. 



as we really find it in nature, and therefore such as 
in science we must represent it, is a tendency, not 
to improve, but to deteriorate. When species are 
modified by external causes, they usually degenerate, 
and do not advance. And there is no instance of a 
species acquiring an entirely new sense, faculty, or 
organ, in addition to, or in the place of, what it 
had before. 

Not only, then, is the doctrine of the transmuta- 
tion of species in itself disproved by the best phy- 
siological reasonings, but the additional assumptions 
which are requisite, to enable its advocates to apply 
it to the explanation of the geological and other 
phenomena of the earth, are altogether gratuitous 
and fantastical. 

Such is the judgment to which we are led by the 
examination of the discussions which have taken 
place on this subject. Yet in certain speculations, 
occasioned by the discovery of the Sivatkerium, sl 
new fossil animal from the Sub-Himalaya mountains 
of India, M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire speaks of the 
belief in the immutability of species as a conviction 
which is fading away from men's minds. He speaks 
too of the termination of the age of Cuvier, "la 
cloture du siecle de Cuvier," and of the commence- 
ment of a better zoological philosophy*. But though 

* Compte Rendu de V Acad, des Sc. 1837, No. 3. p. 81. 



PROGRESSIVE TENDENCIES. 



61 



he expresses himself with great animation, I do not 
perceive that he adduces, in support of his peculiar 
opinions, any arguments in addition to those which 
he urged during the lifetime of Cuvier. And the 
reader* may recollect that the consideration of that 
controversy led us to very different anticipations 
from his, respecting the probable future progress of 
physiology. The discovery of the Sivatherium sup- 
plies no particle of proof to the hypothesis, that the 
existing species of animals are descended from ex- 
tinct creatures which are specifically distinct : and 
we cannot act more wisely than in listening to the 
advice of that eminent naturalist, M. de Blainville|. 
" Against this hypothesis, which, up to the pre- 
sent time, I regard as purely gratuitous, and likely 
to turn geologists out of the sound and excellent 
road in which they now are, I willingly raise my 
voice, with the most absolute conviction of being 
in the right." 



* See p. 36. t Compte Rendu, 1837, No. 5, p. 168. 



62 



GEOLOGY. 



THE QUESTION OF CREATION AS RELATED TO 
SCIENCE. 

*The study of geology opens to us the spectacle of 
many groups of species which have, in the course 
of the earth's history, succeeded each other at vast 
intervals of time; one set of animals and plants dis- 
appearing, as it would seem, from the face of our 
planet, and others, which did not before exist, be- 
coming the only occupants of the globe. And the 
dilemma then presents itself to us anew : — either we 
must accept the doctrine of the transmutation of 
species, and must suppose that the organized species 
of one geological epoch were transmuted into those 
of another by some long-continued agency of natural 
causes; or else, we must believe in many successive 
acts of creation and extinction of species, out of the 
common course of nature; acts which, therefore, we 
may properly call miraculous. 

But since we reject the production of new species 
by means of external influence, do we then, it may 
be asked, accept the other side of the dilemma 
which we have stated ; and admit a series of crea- 



* Hist. Ind. Sc. Book xviii. Chap. vi. Sect. 5. 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 63 



tions of species, by some power beyond that which 
we trace in the ordinary course of nature ? 

To this question, the history and analogy of 
science, I conceive, teach us to reply as follows : — 
All palsetiological sciences, all speculations which at- 
tempt to ascend from the present to the remote past, 
by the chain of causation, do also, by an inevitable 
consequence, urge us to look for the beginning of the 
state of things which we thus contemplate ; but in 
none of these cases have men been able, by the aid 
of science, to arrive at a beginning which is homo- 
geneous with the known course of events. The first 
origin of language, of civilization, of law and govern- 
ment, cannot be clearly made out by reasoning and 
research ; and just as little, we may expect, will a 
knowledge of the origin of the existing and extinct 
species of plants and animals, be the result of phy- 
siological and geological investigation. 

But, though philosophers have never yet demon- 
strated, and perhaps never will be able to demon- 
strate, what was that primitive state of things in the 
social and material worlds, from which the progres- 
sive state took its first departure ; they can still, in 
all the lines of research to which we have referred, 
go very far back; — determine many of the remote cir- 
cumstances of the past sequence of events ; — ascend 
to a point which, from our position at least, seems 
to be near the origin ; — and exclude many supposi- 



64 



GEOLOGY. 



tions respecting the origin itself. Whether, by the 
light of reason alone, men will ever be able to do 
more than this, it is difficult to say. It is, I think, 
no irrational opinion, even on grounds of philoso- 
phical analogy alone, that in all those sciences which 
look back and seek a beginning of things, we may 
be unable to arrive at a consistent and definite belief, 
without having recourse to other grounds of truth, 
as well as to historical research and scientific rea- 
soning. When our thoughts would apprehend stea- 
dily the creation of things, we find that we are 
obliged to summon up other ideas than those which 
regulate the pursuit of scientific truths ; — to call in 
other powers than those to which we refer natural 
events : it cannot, then, be considered as very sur- 
prising, if, in this part of our inquiry, we are com- 
pelled to look for other than the ordinary evidence 
of science. 

Geology, forming one of the palaetiological class 
of sciences, which trace back the history of the earth 
and its inhabitants on philosophical grounds, is thus 
associated with a number of other kinds of research, 
which are concerned about language, law, art, and 
consequently about the internal faculties of man, his 
thoughts, his social habits, his conception of right, 
his love of beauty. Geology being thus brought 
into the atmosphere of moral and mental specula- 
tions, it may be expected that her investigations of 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 



65 



the probable past will share an influence common to 
them ; and that she will not be allowed to point to 
an origin of her own, a merely physical beginning of 
things ; but that, as she approaches towards such a 
goal, she will be led to see that it is the origin of 
many trains of events, the point of convergence of 
many lines. It may be, that instead of being allowed 
to travel up to this focus of being, we are only able 
i to estimate its place and nature, and to form of it 
such a judgment as this; — that it is not only 
the source of mere vegetable and animal life, but 
also of rational and social life, language and arts, 
law and order ; in short, of all the progressive ten- 
dencies by which the highest principles of the intel- 
lectual and moral world have been and are developed, 
as well as of the succession of organic forms, which 
I we find scattered, dead or living, over the earth. 

This reflection concerning the natural scientific 
view of creation, it will be observed, has not been 
sought for, from a wish to arrive at such conclusions; 
but it has flowed spontaneously from the manner in 
which we have had to introduce geology into our 
classification of the sciences : and this classification 
was framed from an unbiassed consideration of the 
general analogies and guiding ideas of the various 
portions of our knowledge. Such remarks as we 
have made may on this account be considered more 
worthy of attention. 



66 



GEOLOGY. 



But such a train of thought must be pursued 
with caution. Although it may not be possible to 
arrive at a right conviction respecting the origin of 
the world, without having recourse to other than 
physical considerations, and to other than geological 
evidence; yet extraneous considerations, and extrane- 
ous evidence, respecting the nature of the beginning 
of things, must never be allowed to influence our 
physics or our geology. Our geological dynamics, 
like our astronomical dynamics, may be inadequate 
to carry us back to an origin of that state of things, 
of which it explains the progress : but this deficiency 
must be supplied, not by adding supernatural to 
natural geological dynamics, but by accepting, in 
their proper place, the views supplied by a portion 
of knowledge of a different character and order. If 
we include in theology the speculations to which we 
have recourse for this purpose, we must exclude 
them from geology. The two sciences may con- 
spire, not by having any part in common ; but 
because, though widely diverse in their lines, both 
point to a mysterious and invisible origin of the 
world. 

All that which claims our assent on those higher 
grounds of which theology takes cognizance, must 
claim such assent as is consistent with those grounds; 
that is, it must require belief in respect of all that 
bears upon the highest relations of our being, those 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 



67 



on which depend our duties and our hopes. Doc- 
trines of this kind may and must be conveyed and 
maintained, by means of information concerning the 
past history of man, and his social and material, as 
well as moral and spiritual fortunes. He who be- 
lieves that a Providence has ruled the affairs of 
mankind, will also believe that a Providence has 
governed the material world. But any language in 
which the narrative of this government of the ma- 
terial world can be conveyed, must necessarily be 
very imperfect and inappropriate ; being expressed 
in terms of those ideas, which have been selected by 
men, in order to describe the appearances and rela- 
tions of created things as they affect one another. 
In all cases, therefore, where we have to attempt to 
interpret such a narrative, we must feel that we are 
extremely liable to err ; and most of all, when our 
interpretation refers to those material objects and 
operations which are most foreign to the main pur- 
pose of a history of providence. If we have to 
consider a communication containing a view of such 
a government of the world, imparted to us, as we 
may suppose, in order to point out the right direc- 
tion for our feelings of trust, and reverence, and 
hope, towards the Governor of the world, we may 
expect that we shall be in no danger of collecting 
from our authority erroneous notions with regard 
to the power, and wisdom, and goodness of His 



68 



GEOLOGY. 



government ; or with respect to our own place, duties, 
and prospects, and the history of our race, so far as 
our duties and prospects are concerned. But that 
we should rightly understand the detail of all events 
in the history of man, or of the skies, or of the 
earth, which are narrated for the purpose of thus 
giving a right direction to our minds, is by no 
means equally certain ; and I do not think it would 
be too much to say, that an immunity from per- 
plexity and error, in such matters, is, on general 
grounds, very improbable. It cannot then surprise 
us to find, that parts of such narrations which 
seem to refer to occurrences like those of which 
astronomers and geologists have attempted to deter- 
mine the laws, have given rise to many interpreta- 
tions, all inconsistent with one another, and most of 
them at variance with the best established principles 
of astronomy and geology. 

It may be urged, that all truths must be consistent 
with all other truths, and that therefore the results 
of true geology or astronomy cannot be irreconcile- 
able with the statements of true theology. And 
this universal consistency of truth with itself must 
be assented to ; but it by no means follows that we 
must be able to obtain a full insight into the nature 
and manner of such a consistency. Such an insight 
would only be possible if we could obtain a clear 
view of that central body of truth, the source 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 69 

of the principles which appear in the separate 
lines of speculation. To expect that we should see 
clearly how the providential government of the 
world is consistent with the unvarying laws by 
which its motions and developements are regulated, 
! is to expect to understand thoroughly the laws of 
motion, of developement, and of providence ; it is to 
expect that we may ascend from geology and astro- 
nomy to the creative and legislative center, from 
which proceeded earth and stars ; and then descend 
again into the moral and spiritual world, because its 
source and center are the same as those of the 
material creation. It is to say that reason, whether 
finite or infinite, must be consistent with itself ; 
and that, therefore, the finite must be able to com- 
prehend the infinite, to travel from any one pro- 
vince of the moral and material universe to any 
other, to trace their bearing, and to connect their 
boundaries. 

One of the advantages of the study of the history 
and nature of science in which we are now engaged 
is, that it warns us of the hopeless and presumptuous 
i character of such attempts to understand the govern- 
<j ment of the world by the aid of science, without 
I throwing any discredit upon the reality of our know- 
ledge; — that while it shows how solid and certain 
each science is, so long as it refers its own facts to 
its own ideas, it confines each science within its own 



70 GEOLOGY. 

limits, and condemns it as empty and helpless, when 
it pronounces upon those subjects which are extra- 
neous to it. The error of persons who should seek a 
geological narrative in theological records, would be 
rather in the search itself than in their interpretation 
of what they might find ; and in like manner the error 
of those who would conclude against a supernatural 
beginning, or a providential direction of the world, 
upon geological or physiological reasonings, would 
be, that they had expected those sciences alone to 
place the origin or the government of the world in 
its proper light. 

Though these observations apply generally to all 
the palsetiological sciences, they may be permitted 
here, because they have an especial bearing upon 
some of the difficulties which have embarrassed the 
progress of geological speculation ; and though such 
difficulties are, I trust, nearly gone by, it is im- 
portant for us to see them in their true bearing. 

From what has been said, it follows that geology 
and astronomy are, of themselves, incapable of 
giving us any distinct and satisfactory account of 
the origin of the universe, or of its parts. We | 
need not wonder, then, at any particular instance of 
this incapacity; as for example, that of which we j 
have been speaking, the impossibility of accounting j 
by any natural means for the production of all the 
successive tribes of plants and animals which have jj 



CREATION AS RELATED TO SCIENCE. 71 



peopled the world in the various stages of its pro- 
gress, as geology teaches us. That they were, like 
our own animal and vegetable contemporaries, pro- 
foundly adapted to the condition in which they were 
placed, we have ample reason to believe ; but when 
we inquire whence they came into this our world, 
geology is silent. The mystery of creation is not 
within the range of her legitimate territory; she 
says nothing, but she points upwards. 



72 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY. 



THE IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 

*1. By an examination of those notions which 
enter into all our reasonings and judgments on 
living things, it appears that we conceive animal 
life as a vortex or cycle of moving matter in which 
the form of the vortex determines the motions, and 
these motions again support the form of the vortex : 
the stationary parts circulate the fluids, and the 
fluids nourish the permanent parts. Each portion 
ministers to the others, each depends upon the 
other. The parts make up the whole, but the 
existence of the whole is essential to the preser- 
vation of the parts. But parts existing under such 
conditions are organs, and the whole is organized. 
This is the fundamental conception of organization. 
"Organized beings," says the physiologist f, "are com- 
posed of a number of essential and mutually depen- 
dent parts. 1 '' " An organized product of nature," 
says the great metaphysician J, " is that in which all 
the parts are mutually ends and means." 

2. It will be observed that we do not content 
ourselves with saying that in such a whole, all the 



* Muller, Elem., p. 18. t Kant, Urtheilskraft, p. 296. 

% Phil. Ind. Sc. Book ix. Chap. vi. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES, 



73 



parts are mutually dependent. This might be true 
even of a mechanical structure ; it would be easy to 
imagine a framework in which each part should be 
necessary to the support of each of the others ; for 
example, an arch of several stones. But in such 
a structure the parts have no properties which they 
derive from the whole. They are beams or stones 
when separate ; they are no more when joined. 
But the same is not the case in an organized 
whole. The limb of an animal separated from the 
body, loses the properties of a limb and soon ceases 
to retain even its form. 

3. Nor do we content ourselves with saying that 
the parts are mutually causes and effects. This is the 
case in machinery. In a clock, the pendulum by 
means of the escapement causes the descent of the 
weight, the weight by the same escapement keeps 
up the motion of the pendulum. But things of this 
kind may happen by accident. Stones slide from 
a rock down the side of a hill and cause it to be 
smooth; the smoothness of the slope causes stones 
still to slide. Yet no one would call such a slide 
an organized system. The system is organized, when 
the effects which take place among the parts are 
essential to our conception of the whole; when the 
whole would not be a whole, nor the parts, parts, 
except these effects were produced ; when the effects 
not only happen in fact, but are included in the 

4 



74 



BIOLOGY. 



idea of the object ; when they are not only seen, 
but foreseen ; not only expected, but intended : in 
short when, instead of being causes and effects, they 
are ends and means, as they are termed in the above 
definition. 

Thus we necessarily include, in our Idea of 
Organization, the notion of an end, a purpose, a 
design; or, to use another phrase which has been 
peculiarly appropriated in this case, a Final Cause. 
This idea of a Final Cause is an essential condition 
in order to the pursuing our researches respecting 
organized bodies. 

4. This Idea of Final Cause is not deduced 
from the phenomena by reasoning, but is assumed 
as the only condition under which we can reason on 
such subjects at all. We do not deduce the Idea 
of Space, or Time, or efficient Cause, from the phe- 
nomena about us, but necessarily look at phenomena 
as subordinate to these Ideas from the beginning of 
our reasoning. It is true, our ideas of relations of 
Space, and Time, and Force, may become much 
more clear by our familiarizing ourselves with par- 
ticular phenomena : but still, the Fundamental Ideas 
are not generated, but unfolded ; not extracted from 
the external world, but evolved from the world 
within. In like manner, in the contemplation of 
organic structures, we consider each part as sub- 
servient to some use, and we cannot study the 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



75 



structure as organic without such a conception 
This notion of adaptation, — this Idea of an End, — ■ 
may become much more clear and impressive by 
seeing it exemplified in particular cases. But still, 
though suggested and evoked by special cases, it is 
not furnished by them. If it be not supplied by 
the mind itself, it can never be logically deduced 
from the phenomena. It is not a portion of the 
facts which we study, but it is a principle which 
connects, includes, and renders them intelligible ; 
as our other Fundamental Ideas do the classes of 
• facts to which they respectively apply. 

5. This has already been confirmed by reference 
to fact ; in the History of Physiology, I have shown 
that those who studied the structure of animals were 
irresistibly led to the conviction that the parts of 
this structure have each its end or purpose ; — that 
each member and organ not merely produces a 
certain effect or answers a certain use, but is so 
framed as to impress us with the persuasion that 
it was constructed for that use : — that it was in- 
tended to produce the effect. It was there seen 
that this persuasion was repeatedly expressed in the 
most emphatic manner by Galen ; — that it directed 
the researches and led to the discoveries of Harvey ; 
— that it has always been dwelt upon as a favourite 
contemplation, and followed as a certain guide, by 
the best anatomists ; — and that it is inculcated by 

4—2 



BIOLOGY. 



the physiologists of the profoundest views and most 
extensive knowledge of our own time. All these 
persons have deemed it a most certain and impor- 
tant principle of physiology, that in every organized 
structure, plant or animal, each intelligible part has 
its allotted office: — each organ is designed for its 
appropriate function : — that nature, in these cases, 
produces nothing in vain : that, in short, each por- 
tion of the whole arrangement has its final cause ; 
an end to which it is adapted, and in this end, the 
reason that it is where and what it is. 

6. This notion of Design in organized bodies 
must, I say, be supplied by the student of organi- 
zation out of his own mind : a truth which will 
become clearer if we attend to the most conspicuous 
and acknowledged instances of design. The struc- 
ture of the eye, in which the parts are curiously 
adjusted so as to produce a distinct image on the 
retina, as in an optical instrument ; — the trochlear 
muscle of the eye, in which the tendon passes round 
a support and turns back, like a rope round a 
pulley; — the prospective contrivances for the pre- 
servation of animals, provided long before they are 
wanted, as the milk of the mother, the teeth of the 
child, the eyes and lungs of the foetus: — these 
arrangements, and innumerable others, call up in 
us a persuasion that Design has entered into the 
plan of animal form and progress. And if we 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



77 



bring in our minds this conception of Design, 
nothing can more fully square with and fit it, than 
such instances as these. But if we did not already 
possess the Idea of Design; — if we had not had 
our notion of mechanical contrivance awakened by 
inspection of optical instruments, or pulleys, or in 
some other way ; — if we had never been conscious 
ourselves of providing for the future; — if this were 
the case, we could not recognise contrivance and 
prospectiveness in such instances as we have referred 
to. The facts are, indeed, admirably in accordance 
with these conceptions, when the two are brought 
together : but the facts and the conceptions come 
together from different quarters — from without and 
from within. 

7. We may further illustrate this point by re- 
ferring to the relations of travellers who tell us that 
when consummate examples of human mechanical 
contrivance have been set before savages, they have 
appeared incapable of apprehending them as proofs 
of design. This shews that in such cases the Idea 
of Design had not been developed in the minds of 
the people who were thus unintelligent : but it no 
more proves that such an idea does not naturally 
and necessarily arise, in the progress of men's minds, 
than the confused manner in which the same savages 
apprehend the relations of space, or number, or 
cause, proves that these ideas do not naturally be- 



78 



BIOLOGY. 



long to their intellects. All men have these ideas ; 
and it is because they cannot help referring their 
sensations to such ideas, that they apprehend the 
world as existing in time and space, and as a series 
of causes and effects. It would be very erroneous 
to say that the belief of such truths is obtained 
by logical reasoning from facts. And in like man- 
ner we cannot logically deduce design from the con- 
templation of organic structures ; although it is 
impossible for us, when the facts are clearly before 
us, not to find a reference to design operating in 
our minds. 

8. Again ; the evidence of the doctrine of Final 
Causes as a fundamental principle of Biology may be 
obscured and weakened in some minds by the con- 
stant habit of viewing this doctrine with suspicion 
as unphilosophical and at variance with morphology. 
By cherishing such views it is probable that many 
persons, physiologists and others, have gradually 
brought themselves to suppose that many or most 
of the arrangements which are familiarly adduced 
as instances of design may be accounted for, or 
explained away ; — that there is a certain degree of 
prejudice and narrowness of comprehension in that 
lively admiration of the adaptation of means to 
ends which common minds derive from the spectacle 
of organic arrangements. And yet, even in persons 
accustomed to these views, the strong and natural 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



79 



influence of the Idea of a Final Cause, the spon- 
taneous recognition of the relation of means to an 
end as the assumption which makes organic arrange- 
ments intelligible, breaks forth when we bring be- 
fore them a new case, with regard to which their 
genuine convictions have not yet been modified by 
their intellectual habits. I will offer, as an example 
which may serve to illustrate this, the discoveries 
recently made with regard to the process of suck- 
ling of the kangaroo. In the case of this, as of 
other pouched animals, the young animal is removed, 
while very small and imperfectly formed, from the 
womb to the pouch, in which the teats are, and is 
there placed with its lips against one of the nipples. 
But the young animal taken altogether is not so 
large as the nipple, and is therefore incapable of 
sucking after the manner of common mammals. 
Here is a difficulty : how is it overcome I — By an 
appropriate contrivance: the nipple, which in com- 
mon mammals is not furnished with any muscle, is 
in the kangaroo provided with a powerful extrusory 
muscle by which the mother can inject the milk into 
the mouth of her offspring. And again ; in order 
to give attachment to this muscle there is a bone 
which is not found in animals of other kinds. But 
this mode of solving the problem of suckling so 
small a creature introduces another difficulty. If 
the milk is injected into the mouth of the young 



80 



BIOLOGY. 



one, without any action of its own muscles, what 
is to prevent the fluid entering the windpipe and 
producing suffocation ? How is this danger avoided ? 
— By another appropriate contrivance: there is a 
• funnel in the back of the throat by which the air- 
passage is completely separated from the passage 
for nutriment, and the injected milk passes in a 
divided stream on each side of the larynx to the 
oesophagus*. And as if to show that this apparatus 
is really formed with a view to the wants of the 
young one, the structure alters in the course of 
the animal's growth ; and the funnel, no longer 
needed, is modified and disappears. 

With regard to this and similar examples, the 
remark which I would urge is this : — that no one, 
however prejudiced or unphilosophical he may in 
general deem the reference to Final Causes, can, 
at the first impression, help regarding this curious 
system of arrangement as the means to an end. 
So contemplated, it becomes significant, intelligible, 
admirable : without such a principle, it is an un- 
meaning complexity, a collection of contradictions, 
producing an almost impossible- result by a por- 
tentous conflict of chances. The parts of this ap- 
paratus cannot have produced one another; one 
part is in the mother; another part in the young 



Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 3*8. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



81 



one: without their harmony they could not be 
effective ; but nothing except design can operate to 
make them harmonious. They are intended to work 
together ; and we cannot resist the conviction of tins 
intention when the facts first come before us. Per- 
haps there may hereafter be physiologists who, 
tracing the gradual develop ement of the parts of 
which we have spoken, and the analogies which 
connect them with the structures of other animals, 
may think that this developement, these analogies, 
account for the conformation we have described ; 
and may hence think lightly of the explanation 
derived from the reference to Final Causes. Yet 
surely it is clear, on a calm consideration of the 
subject, that the latter explanation is not disturbed 
by the former ; and that the observer's first im- 
pression, that this is "an irrefragable evidence of 
creative foresight can never be obliterated ; how- 
ever much it may be obscured in the minds of 
those who confuse this view by mixing it with 
others which are utterly heterogeneous to it, and 
therefore cannot be contradictory. 

9. I have elsewhere f remarked how physiologists, 
who thus look with suspicion and dislike upon the 
introduction of Final Causes into physiology, have 
still been unable to exclude from their speculations 



* Mr. Owen, in Phil. Trans., 1834, p. 349. 

t Bridgeivater Treatise, p. 352. 

4 — 5 



82 



BIOLOGY. 



causes of this kind. Thus Cabanis says*, " I regard 
with the great Bacon, the philosophy of Final 
Causes as sterile ; but I have elsewhere acknow- 
ledged that it was very difficult for the most cautious 
man never to have recourse to them in his expla- 
nations.*' Accordingly, he says, " The partisans of 
Final Causes nowhere find arguments so strong in 
favour of their way of looking at nature as in the 
laws which preside and the circumstances of all 
kinds which concur in the reproduction of living 
races. In no case do the means employed appear 
so clearly relative to the end." And it would be 
easy to find similar acknowledgments, express or 
virtual, in other writers of the same kind. Thus 
Bichat, after noting the difference between the or- 
ganic sensibility by which the organs are made to 
perform their offices, and the animal sensibility of 
which the nervous center is the seat, says f, " No 
doubt it will be asked, why? — that is, as we shall 
see, for what end — " the organs of internal life have 
received from nature an inferior degree of sensibility 
only, and why they do not transmit to the brain the 
impressions which they receive, while all the acts of 
the animal life imply this transmission I The reason 
is simply this, that all the phenomena which establish 
our connexions with surrounding objects ought to be, 

* Rapports de Physique et du Moral, i. 299. 
t Life and Death, (trans.) p. 32. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



83 



and are in fact, under the influence of the will ; while 
all those which serve for the purpose of assimilation 
only, escape, and ought indeed to escape, such in- 
fluence." The reason here assigned is the Final 
Cause ; which, as Bichat justly says, we cannot help 
asking for. 

10. Again ; I may quote from the writer last 
mentioned another remark, which shews that in the 
organical sciences, and in them alone, the Idea of 
forces as Means acting to an End, is inevitably 
assumed and acknowledged as of supreme authority. 
In Biology alone, observes Bichat*, have we to con- 
template the state of disease. 66 Physiology is to 
the movements of living bodies, what astronomy, 
dynamics, hydraulics, &c, are to those of inert 
matter : but these latter sciences have no branches 
which correspond to them as pathology corresponds 
to physiology. For the same reason all notion of 
a medicament is repugnant to the physical sciences. 
A medicament has for its object to bring the pro- 
perties of the system back to their natural type; 
but the physical properties never depart from this 
type, and have no need to be brought back to it : 
" and thus there is nothing in the physical sciences 
which holds the place of therapeutick in physiology." 



* Anatomie Generate, i. liij. 



84 



BIOLOGY. 



Or, as we might express it otherwise, of inert forces 
we have no conception of what they ought to do, ex- 
cept what they do. The forces of gravity, elasticity, 
affinity, never act in a diseased manner ; we never 
conceive them as failing in their purpose ; for we 
do not conceive them as having any purpose which 
is answered by one mode of their action rather 
than another. But with organical forces the case 
is different ; they are necessarily conceived as acting 
for the preservation and developement of the system 
in which they reside. If they do not do this, they 
fail, they are deranged, diseased. They have for 
their object to conform the living being to a cer- 
tain type ; and if they cause or allow it to deviate 
from this type, their action is distorted, morbid, 
contrary to the ends of nature. And thus this 
conception of organized beings as susceptible of 
disease, implies the recognition of a state of health, 
and of the organs and the vital forces as means for 
preserving this normal condition. The state of health 
and of perpetual developement is necessarily con- 
templated as the Final Cause of the processes and 
powers with which the different parts of plants and 
animals are endowed. 

11. This idea of a Final Cause is applicable as a 
fundamental and regulative idea to our speculations 
concerning organized creatures only. That there is 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 85 



a purpose in many other parts of the creation, we 
find abundant reason to believe from the arrange- 
ments and laws which prevail around us. But 
this persuasion is not to be allowed to regulate 
and direct our reasonings with regard to inorganic 
matter, of which conception the relation of means 
and end forms no essential part. In mere Physics, 
Final Causes, as Bacon has observed, are not to 
be admitted as a principle of reasoning. But in 
the organical sciences, the assumption of design and 
purpose in every part of every whole, that is, the 
pervading idea of Final Cause, is the basis of sound 
reasoning and the source of true doctrine. 

12. The Idea of Final Cause, of end, purpose, 
design, intention, is altogether different from the 
Idea of Cause, as efficient cause, which we formerly 
had to consider ; and on this account the use of 
the word Cause in this phrase has been objected to. 
If the idea be clearly entertained and steadily 
applied, the word is a question of subordinate 
importance. The term Final Cause has been long- 
familiarly used, and appears not likely to lead to 
confusion. 

IS. The consideration of Final Causes, both in 
physiology and in other subjects, has at all times 
attracted much attention, in consequence of its 
bearing upon the belief of an Intelligent Author 
of the Universe. I do not intend, in this place, to 



86 



BIOLOGY. 



pursue the subject far in this view : but there is one 
antithesis of opinion, already noticed in speaking of 
Physiology, on which I will again make a few re- 
marks *. 

It has appeared to some persons that the mere 
aspect of order and symmetry in the works of nature 
— the contemplation of comprehensive and consistent 
law — is sufficient to lead us to the conception of a 
design and intelligence producing the order and 
carrying into effect the law. Without here at- 
tempting to decide whether this is true, we may 
discern, after what has been said, that the concep- 
tion of design, arrived at in this manner, is alto- 
gether different from that idea of design which is 
suggested to us by organized bodies, and which we 
describe as the doctrine of Final Causes. The 
regular form of a crystal, whatever beautiful sym- 
metry it may exhibit, whatever general laws it may 
exemplify, does not prove design in the same man- 
ner in which design is proved by the provisions for 
the preservation and growth of the seeds of plants, 
and of the young of animals. The law of universal 
gravitation, however wide and simple, does not im- 
press us with the belief of a purpose, as does that 
propensity by which the two sexes of each animal 
are brought together. If it could be shewn that 



* See p. 28. 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



87 



the symmetrical structure of a flower results from 
laws of the same kind as those which determine the 
regular forms of crystals, or the motions of the 
planets, the discovery might be very striking and 
important, but it would not at all come under our 
idea of Final Cause. 

14. Accordingly, there have been, in modern 
times, two different schools of physiologists, the 
one proceeding upon the idea of Final Causes, the 
other school seeking in the realm of organized bodies 
wide laws and analogies from which that idea is ex- 
cluded. All the great biologists of preceding times, 
and some of the greatest of modern times, have 
belonged to the former school ; and especially Cuvier, 
who may be considered as the head of it. It was 
solely by the assiduous application of this principle 
of Final Cause, as he himself constantly declared, 
that he was enabled to make the discoveries which 
have rendered his name so illustrious, and which 
contain a far larger portion of important anatomical 
and biological truth than it ever before fell to the 
lot of one man to contribute to the science. 

15. The opinions which have been put in op- 
position to the principle of Final Causes have, for 
the most part, been stated vaguely and ambiguously. 
Among the most definite of such principles, is that 
which, in the History of the subject, I have termed 
the Principle of metamorphosed and developed Sym- 



88 



BIOLOGY. 



metry, upon which has been founded the science of 
Morphology. 

The reality and importance of this principle are 
not to be denied by us : we have shown how they 
are proved by its application in various sciences, 
and especially in botany. But those advocates of 
this principle who have placed it in antithesis to 
the doctrine of Final Causes, have by this means 
done far more injustice to their own favourite doc- 
trine than damage to the one which they opposed. 
The adaptation of the bones of the skeleton to the 
muscles, the provision of fulcrums, projecting pro- 
cesses, channels, so that the motions and forces 
shall be such as the needs of life require, cannot 
possibly become less striking and convincing, from 
any discovery of general analogies of one animal 
frame with another, or of laws connecting the de- 
velopement of different parts. Whenever such laws 
are discovered, we can only consider them as the 
means of producing that adaptation which we so 
much admire. Our conviction that the Artist works 
intelligently, is not destroyed, though it may be 
modified and transferred, when we obtain a sight 
of his tools. Our discovery of laws cannot con- 
tradict our persuasion of ends; our Morphology 
cannot prejudice our Teleology. 

16. The irresistible and constant apprehension 
of a purpose in the forms and functions of animals 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



89 



has introduced into the writings of speculators on 
these subjects various forms of expression, more or 
less precise, more or less figurative ; as, that animals 
are framed with a view to the part which they 
have to play; — that nature does nothing in vain; 
that she employs the best means for her ends ; and 
the like. However metaphorical or inexact any 
of these phrases may be in particular, yet taken 
altogether, they convey, clearly and definitely enough 
to preclude any serious error, a principle of the 
most profound reality and of the highest impor- 
tance in the organical sciences. But some adherents 
of the morphological school of which I have spoken 
reject, and even ridicule, all such modes of ex- 
pression. "I know nothing,'' 1 says M. Geoffroy Saint- 
Hilaire, "of animals which have to play a part in 
nature. I cannot make of nature an intelligent 
being who does nothing in vain ; who acts by the 
shortest mode ; who does all for the best." The 
philosophers of this school, therefore, do not, it 
would seem, feel any of the admiration which is 
irresistibly excited in all the rest of mankind at 
the contemplation of the various and wonderful 
adaptations for the preservation, the enjoyment, the 
continuation of the creatures which people the 
globe; — at the survey of the mechanical contri- 
vances, the chemical agencies, the prospective ar- 
rangements, the compensations, the minute adap- 



90 



BIOLOGY. 



tations, the comprehensive interdependencies, which 
zoology and physiology have brought into view, 
more and more, the further their researches have 
been carried. Yet the clear and deep-seated con- 
viction of the reality of these provisions, which the 
study of anatomy produces in its most profound 
and accurate cultivators, cannot be shaken by any 
objections to the metaphors or terms in which this 
conviction is clothed. In regard to the Idea of a 
Purpose in organization, as in regard to any other 
idea, we cannot fully express our meaning by phrases 
borrowed from any extraneous source ; but that 
impossibility arises precisely from the circumstance 
of its being a Fundamental Idea which is inevitably 
assumed in our representation of each special fact. 
The same objection has been made to the idea of 
mechanical force, on account of its being often ex- 
pressed in metaphorical language ; for writers have 
spoken of an energy, effort, or solicitation to motion ; 
and bodies have been said to be animated by a force. 
Such language, it has been urged, implies volition, 
and the act of animated beings. But the idea of 
force as distinct from mere motion, — as the cause 
of motion, or of tendency to motion, — is not on 
that account less real. We endeavour in vain to 
conduct our mechanical reasonings without the aid 
of this idea, and must express it as we can. Just 
as little can we reason concerning organized beings 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



91 



without assuming that each part has its function, 
each function its purpose ; and so far as our phrases 
imply this, they will not mislead us, however inexact, 
or however figurative they be. 

17. The doctrine of a purpose in organization 
has been sometimes called the doctrine of the Con- 
ditions of Existence ; and has been stated as teach- 
ing that each animal must be so framed as to 
contain in its structure the conditions which its 
existence requires. When expressed in this man- 
ner, it has given rise to the objection, that it 
merely offers an identical proposition; since no 
animal can exist without such conditions. But in 
reality, such expressions as those just quoted give 
an inadequate statement of the Principle of a Final 
Cause. For we discover in innumerable cases, ar- 
rangements in an animal, of which we see, indeed, 
that they are subservient to its well being ; but 
the nature of which we never should have been able 
at all to conjecture, from considering what was 
necessary to its existence, and which strike us, no 
less by their unexpectedness than by their adapta- 
tion : so far are they from being presented by any 
perceptible necessity. Who would venture to say 
that the trochlear muscle, or the power of articu- 
late speech, must occur in man, because they are 
the necessary conditions of his existence? When, 
indeed, the general scheme and mode of being of 



92 



BIOLOGY. 



an animal are known, the expert and profound 
anatomist can reason concerning the proportions 
and form of its various parts and organs, and prove 
in some measure what their relations must be. We 
can assert, with Cuvier, that certain forms of the 
viscera require certain forms of the teeth, certain 
forms of the limbs, certain powers of the senses. 
But in all this, the functions of self-nutrition and 
digestion are supposed already existing as ends : and 
it being taken for granted, as the only conceivable 
basis of reasoning, that the organs are means to 
these ends, we may discover what modifications of 
these organs are necessarily related to and con- 
nected with each other. Instead of terming this 
rule of speculation merely " the principle of the con- 
ditions of existence," we might term it " the prin- 
ciple of the conditions of organs as means adapted to 
animal existence as their end." And how far this 
principle is from being a mere barren truism, the 
extraordinary discoveries made by the great assertor 
of the principle, and universally assented to by 
naturalists, abundantly prove. The vast extinct 
creation which is recalled to life in Cuvier^s great 
work, the Ossemens Fossiles, cannot be the conse- 
quence of a mere identical proposition. 

18. It has been objected, also, that the doctrine 
of Final Causes supposes us to be acquainted with 
the intentions of the Creator ; which, it is insinuated, 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



93 



is a most presumptuous and irrational basis for our 
reasonings. But there can be nothing presumptuous 
or irrational in reasoning on that basis, which if we 
reject, we cannot reason at all. If men really can 
discern, and cannot help discerning, a design in cer- 
tain portions of the works of creation, this per- 
ception is the soundest and most satisfactory ground 
for the convictions to which it leads. The Ideas 
which we necessarily employ in the contemplation of 
the world around us, afford us the only natural 
means of forming any conception of the Creator and 
Governor of the Universe; and if we are by such 
means enabled to elevate our thoughts, however 
inadequately, towards Him, where is the presumption 
of doing so? or rather, where is the wisdom of re- 
fusing to open our minds to contemplations so ani- 
mating and elevating, and yet so entirely convincing ? 
We possess the ideas of time and space, under 
which all the objects of the universe present them- 
selves to us ; and in virtue of these ideas thus pos- 
sessed, we believe the Creator to be eternal and 
omnipotent. When we find that we, in like man- 
ner, possess the idea of a Design in Creation, and 
that with regard to ourselves, and creatures more 
or less resembling ourselves, we cannot but contem- 
plate their constitution under this idea, we cannot 
abstain from ascribing to the Creator the infinite 



94 



BIOLOGY. 



profundity and extent of design to which all these 
special instances belong as parts of a whole. 

19. I have here considered Design as manifest 
in organization only : for in that field of speculation 
it is forced upon us as contained in all the pheno- 
mena, and as the only mode of our understanding 
them. The existence of Final Causes has often 
been pointed out in other portions of the creation ; — 
in the apparent adaptations of the various parts of 
the earth and of the solar system to each other 
and to organized beings. In these provinces of 
speculation, however, the principle of Final Causes 
is no longer the basis and guide, but the sequel and 
result of our physical reasonings. If in looking at 
the universe, we follow the widest analogies of which 
we obtain a view, we see, however dimly, reason to 
believe that all its laws are adapted to each other, 
and intended to work together for the benefit of 
its organic population, and for the general welfare 
of its rational tenants. On this subject, however, 
not immediately included in the principle of Final 
Causes as here stated, I shall not dwell. I will 
only make this remark; that the assertion appears 
to be quite unfounded, that as science advances from 
point to point, Final Causes recede before it, and 
disappear one after the other. The principle of 
design changes its mode of application indeed, but 



IDEA OF FINAL CAUSES. 



95 



it loses none of its force. We no longer consider 
particular facts as produced by special interpositions, 
but we consider design as exhibited in the esta- 
blishment and adjustment of the laws by which 
particular facts are produced. We do not look 
upon each particular cloud as brought near us that 
it may drop fatness on our fields, but the general 
adaptation of the laws of heat, and air, and mois- 
ture, to the promotion of vegetation, does not be- 
come doubtful. We do not consider the sun as less 
intended to warm and vivify the tribes of plants and 
animals, because we find that, instead of revolving 
round the earth as an attendant, the earth along 
with other planets revolves round him. We are 
rather, by the discovery of the general laws of 
nature, led into a scene of wider design, of deeper 
contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. 
Final causes, if they appear driven further from us 
by such an extension of our views, embrace us only 
with a vaster and more majestic circuit : instead of 
a few threads connecting some detached objects, 
they become a stupendous net-work, which is wound 
round and round the universal frame of things. 



96 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



NATURE OF PAL^TIOLOGY. 

*1. The class of Sciences which I designate as 
Palcetiological are those in which the object is 
to ascend from the present state of things to a 
more ancient condition, from which the present 
is derived by intelligible causes. As conspicuous 
examples of this class we may take Geology, Glos- 
sology or Comparative Philology, and Comparative 
Archaeology. These provinces of knowledge might 
perhaps be intelligibly described as Histories ; the 
History of the Earth, — the History of Languages, — 
the History of Arts. But these phrases would 
not fully describe the sciences we have in view ; 
for the object to which we now suppose their in- 
vestigations to be directed is not merely to ascer- 
tain what the series of events has been, as in the 
common forms of History, but also how it has 
been brought about. These sciences are to treat 
of causes as well as of effects. Such researches 
might be termed philosophical history; or, in order 
to mark more distinctly that the causes of events 
are the leading object of attention, wtiological his- 



* Phil. Ind. Sc. Book x. Chap. i. 

I 



NATURE OF PALiETIOLOGY. 



97 



tory. But since it will be more convenient to de- 
scribe this class of sciences by a single appellation, 
I have taken the liberty of proposing to call them* 
Palcetiological Sciences. 

While Palaeontology describes the beings which 
have lived in former ages without investigating 
their causes, and JEtiology treats of causes with- 
out distinguishing historical from mechanical causa- 
tion ; Palwtiology is a combination of the two 
sciences ; exploring by means of the second the 
phenomena presented by the first. The portions 
of knowledge which I include in this term are 
palseontological setiological sciences. 

2. All these sciences are connected by this 
bond ; — that they all endeavour to ascend to a past 
state, by considering what is the present state of 
things, and what are the causes of change. Geology 
examines the existing appearances of the materials 
which form the earth, infers from them previous 
conditions, and speculates concerning the forces by 
which one condition has been made to succeed 
another. Another science, cultivated with great 



* A philological writer, in a very interesting work, (Mr. Donaldson, 
in his New Cratylus, p. 12,) expresses his dislike of this word, and 
suggests that I must mean palce -(Etiological. I think the word is more 
likely to obtain currency in the more compact and euphonious form in 
which I have used it. It has been adopted by Mr. Winning, in his 
Manual of Comparative Philology. 

5 



98 



PALuETIOLOGY. 



zeal and success in modern times, compares the 
languages of different countries and nations, and 
by an examination of their materials and structure, 
endeavours to determine their descent from one 
another : this science has been termed Comparative 
Philology or Ethnography; and by the French, Lin- 
gmstique, a word which we might imitate in order 
to have a single name for the science, but the 
Greek derivative Glossology appears to be more con- 
venient in its form. The progress of the Arts 
(Architecture and the like) ; how one stage of 
their culture produced another; and how far we 
can trace their maturest and most complete con- 
dition to their earliest form in various nations ; — 
are problems of great interest belonging to another 
subject, which we may for the present term Com- 
parative Archaeology. I have already noticed, in 
the History*, how the researches into the origin 
of natural objects, and those relating to works of 
art, pass by slight gradations into each other ; how 
the examination of the changes which have affected 
an ancient temple or fortress, harbour or river, 
may concern alike the geologist and the antiquary. 
Cuvier's assertion that the geologist is an antiquary 
of a new order, is perfectly correct, for both are 
palaetiologists. 



* Hist. Ind. Sci. in., 482. 



NATURE OF PAL^ETIOLOGY. 99 

3. We are very far from having exhausted, 
by this enumeration, the class of sciences which 
are thus connected. We may easily point out 
many other subjects of speculation of the same kind. 
As we may look back towards the first condition 
of our planet, we may in like manner turn our 
thoughts towards the first condition of the solar 
system, and try whether we can discern any traces 
of an order of things antecedent to that which is 
now established; and if we find, as some great 
mathematicians have conceived, indications of an ear- 
lier state in which the planets were not yet gathered 
into their present forms, we have, in the pursuit 
of this train of research, a palaetiological portion 
of Astronomy. Again, as we may inquire how lan- 
guages, and how man, have been diffused over the 
earth's surface from place to place, we may make 
the like inquiry with regard to the races of plants 
and animals, founding our inferences upon the ex- 
isting geographical distribution of the animal and 
vegetable kingdoms: and thus the Geography of 
Plants and of Animals also becomes a portion of 
Palaetiology. Again, as we can in some measure 
trace the progress of Arts from nation to nation 
and from age to age, we can also pursue a similar 
investigation with respect to the progress of Mytho- 
logy, of Poetry, of Government, of Law. Thus the 
philosophical history of the human race, viewed 

5-2 



100 



PALtETIOLOGY. 



with reference to these subjects, if it can give rise 
to knowledge so exact as to be properly called 
Science, will supply sciences belonging to the class 
I am now to consider. 

4. It is not an arbitrary and useless proceeding 
to construct such a class of sciences. For wide 
and various as their subjects are, it will be found 
that they have all certain principles, maxims, and 
miles of procedure in common ; and thus may re- 
flect light upon each other by being treated of toge- 
ther. Indeed it will, I trust, appear, that we 
may by such a juxtaposition of different specula- 
tions, obtain most salutary lessons. And questions, 
which, when viewed as they first present themselves 
under the aspect of a special science, disturb and 
alarm men's minds, may perhaps be contemplated 
more calmly, as well as more clearly, when they 
are considered as general problems of paiastiology. 

5. It will at once occur to the reader that, 
if we include in the circuit of our classification such 
subjects as have been mentioned, — politics and law, 
mythology and poetry, — we are travelling very far 
beyond the material sciences within whose limits 
we at the outset proposed to confine our discus- 
sion of principles. But we shall remain faithful to 
our original plan; and for that purpose shall con- 
fine ourselves in this work to those palsetiological 
sciences which deal with material things. It is 



NATURE OF PAL^TIOLOGY. 10 i 



true, that the general principles and maxims which 
regulate these sciences apply also to investigations 
of a parallel kind respecting the products which 
result from man's imaginative and social endow- 
ments. But although there may be a similarity 
in the general form of such portions of knowledge, 
their materials are so different from those with 
which we have been hitherto dealing, that we can- 
not hope to take them into our present account 
with any profit. Language, Government, Law, 
Poetry, Art, embrace a number of peculiar Fun- 
damental Ideas, hitherto not touched upon in the 
disquisitions in which we have been engaged ; and 
most of them involved in far greater perplexity and 
ambiguity, the subject of controversies far more 
vehement, than the Ideas we have hitherto been 
examining. We must therefore avoid resting any 
part of our philosophy upon sciences, or supposed 
sciences, which treat of such subjects. To attend 
to this caution, is the only way in which we can 
secure the advantage we proposed to ourselves at 
the outset, of taking, as the basis of our specula- 
tions, none but systems of undisputed truths, clearly 
understood and expressed*. We have already said 
that we must, knowingly and voluntarily, resign 
that livelier and warmer interest which doctrines 



* See Phil. Ind. Sci. Vol. i. p. 8. 



102 



PALtETIOLOGV. 



on subjects of Polity or Art possess, and content 
ourselves with the cold truths of the material sciences, 
in order that we may avoid having the very foun- 
dations of our philosophy involved in controversy, 
doubt, and obscurity. 

6. We may remark, however, that the neces- 
sity of rejecting from our survey a large portion 
of the researches which the general notion of Palse- 
tiology includes, suggests one consideration which 
adds to the interest of our task. We began our 
inquiry with the trust that any sound views which 
we should be able to obtain respecting the nature 
of truth in the physical sciences, and the mode of 
discovering it, must also tend to throw light upon 
the nature and prospects of knowledge of all other 
kinds ; — must be useful to us in moral, political, 
and philological researches. We stated this as a 
confident anticipation ; and the evidence of the 
justice of our belief already begins to appear. We 
have seen that biology leads us to psychology, if 
we choose to follow the path; and thus the pas- 
sage from the material to the immaterial has 
already unfolded itself at one point ; and we now 
perceive that there are several large provinces of 
speculation which concern subjects belonging to 
man's immaterial nature, and which are governed 
by the same laws as sciences altogether physical. 
It is not our business here to dwell on the pro- 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 



108 



spects which our philosophy thus opens to our 
contemplation; but we may allow ourselves, in this 
last stage of our pilgrimage among the founda- 
tions of the physical sciences, to be cheered and 
animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, 
however dimly, from a higher and brighter region. 

But in our reasonings and examples we shall 
mainly confine ourselves to the physical sciences ; 
and for the most part to Geology, which in the 
History I have put forwards as the best represen- 
tative of the Paleetiological Sciences. 

DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES AND OF UNIFORMITY. 

1. Doctrine of Catastrophes. — The attempts to 
frame a theory of the earth have brought into view 
two completely opposite opinions : — one, which re- 
presents the course of nature as uniform through all 
ages, the causes which produce change having had 
the same intensity in former times which they have 
at the present day ; — the other opinion, which sees 
in the present condition of things evidences of cata- 
strophes ; changes of a more sweeping kind, and pro- 
duced by more powerful agencies than those which 
occur in recent times. Geologists who held the 
latter opinion, maintained that the forces which have 
elevated the Alps or the Andes to their present 



104 



PALvETIOLOGY, 



height could not have been any forces which are 
now in action : they pointed to vast masses of strata 
hundreds of miles long, thousands of feet thick, 
thrown into highly-inclined positions, fractured, dis- 
located, crushed : they remarked that upon the shat- 
tered edges of such strata they found enormous 
accumulations of fragments and rubbish, rounded by 
the action of water, so as to denote ages of violent 
aqueous action : they conceived that they saw in- 
stances in which whole mountains of rock in a state 
of igneous fusion, must have burst the earth's crust 
from below : they found that in the course of the 
revolutions by which one stratum of rock was placed 
upon another, the whole collection of animal species 
which tenanted the earth and the seas had been 
removed, and a new set of living things introduced 
in its place : finally, they found above all the strata 
vast masses of sand and gravel containing bones of 
animals, and apparently the work of a mighty deluge. 
With all these proofs before their eyes they thought 
it impossible not to judge that the agents of change 
by which the world was urged from one condition 
to another till it reached its present state, must 
have been more violent, more powerful, than any 
which we see at work around us. They conceived 
that the evidence of "catastrophes 1 '' was irre- 
sistible. 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 105 

2. Doctrine of Uniformity. — I need not here 
repeat the narrative (given in the History*) of the 
process by which this formidable array of proofs was, 
in the minds of some eminent geologists, weakened, 
and at last overcome. This was done by showing 
that the sudden breaks in the succession of strata 
were apparent only, the discontinuity of the series 
which occurred in one country being removed by 
terms interposed in another locality : by urging that 
the total effect produced by existing causes, taking 
into account the accumulated result of long periods, 
is far greater than a casual speculator would think 
possible : by making it appear that there are in 
many parts of the world evidences of a slow and 
imperceptible rising of the land since it was the 
habitation of now existing species : by proving that 
it is not universally true that the strata separated in 
time by supposed catastrophes contain distinct species 
of animals : by pointing out the limited fields of the 
supposed diluvial action : and finally, by remarking 
that though the creation of species is a mystery, the 
extinction of them is going on in our own day. 
Hypotheses were suggested, too, by which it was 
conceived that the change of climate might be ex- 
plained, which, as the consideration of the fossil 
remains seemed to show, must have taken place 



* Hist. lad. Set., in. 612. 

5—5 



106 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



between the ancient and the modern times. In this 
manner the whole evidence of catastrophes was ex- 
plained away: the notion of a series of paroxysms 
of violence in the causes of change was represented 
as a delusion arising from our contemplating short 
periods only in the action of present causes : length 
of time was called in to take the place of intensity 
of force : and it was declared that geology need not 
despair of accounting for the revolutions of the earth, 
as astronomy accounts for the revolutions of the 
heavens, by the universal action of causes which are 
close at hand to us, operating through time and 
space without variation or decay. 

An antagonism of opinions, somewhat of the 
same kind as this, will be found to manifest itself 
in the other Palsetiological Sciences as well as in 
Geology ; and it will be instructive to endeavour to 
balance these opposite doctrines. I will mention 
some of the considerations which bear upon the 
subject. 

3. Is Uniformity probable a priori? — The doc- 
trine of Uniformity in the course of nature has 
sometimes been represented by its adherents as 
possessing a great degree of a priori probability. 
It is highly unphilosophical, it has been urged, to 
assume that the causes of the geological events of 
former times were of a different kind from causes 
now in action, if causes of this latter kind can in 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 107 

any way be made to explain the facts. The analogy 
of all other sciences compels us, it was said, to ex- 
plain phenomena by known, not by unknown, causes. 
And on these grounds the geological teacher recom- 
mended* "an earnest and patient endeavour to 
reconcile the indications of former change with the 
evidence of gradual mutations now in progress." 

But on this we may remark, that if by knoivn 
causes we mean causes acting with the same intensity 
which they have had during historical times, the 
restriction is altogether arbitrary and groundless. 
Let it be granted, for instance, that many parts 
of the earth's surface are now undergoing an imper- 
ceptible rise. It is not pretended that the rate of 
this elevation is rigorously uniform ; what, then, are 
the limits of its velocity ? Why may it not increase 
so as to assume that character of violence which 
we may term a catastrophe with reference to all 
changes hitherto recorded I Why may not the rate 
of elevation be such that we may conceive the strata 
to assume suddenly a position nearly vertical ? and is 
it, in fact, easy to conceive a position of strata nearly 
vertical, a position which occurs so frequently, to be 
gradually assumed ? In cases where the strata are 
nearly vertical, as in the Isle of Wight, and hun- 
dreds of other places, or where they are actually 



* Lyeil, B. iv. c. i. p. 328. 



108 



PALyETIOLOGY. 



inverted, as sometimes occurs, are not the causes 
which have produced the effect as truly known 
causes, as those which have raised the coasts where 
we trace the former beach in an elevated terrace I 
If the latter case proves slow elevation, does not 
the former case prove rapid elevation ? In neither 
case have we any measure of the time employed 
in the change ; but does not the very nature of 
the results enable us to discern, that if one was 
gradual, the other was comparatively sudden? 

The causes which are now elevating a portion 
of Scandinavia can be called known causes^ only 
because we know the effect. Are not the causes 
which have elevated the Alps and the Andes known 
causes in the same sense ? We know nothing in 
either case which confines the intensity of the force 
within any limit, or prescribes to it any law of uni- 
formity. Why, then, should we make a merit of 
cramping our speculations by such assumptions ? 
Whether the causes of change do act uniformly ; — 
whether they oscillate only within narrow limits ; — 
whether their intensity in former times was nearly 
the same as it now is; — these are precisely the 
questions which we wish Nature to answer to us 
impartially and truly : where is then the wisdom of 
" an earnest and patient endeavour " to secure an 
affirmative reply? 

Thus I conceive that the assertion of an a priori 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 



109 



claim to probability and philosophical spirit in favour 
of the doctrine of uniformity, is quite untenable. 
We must learn from an examination of all the facts, 
and not from any assumption of our own, whether 
the course of nature be uniform. The limit of inten- 
sity being really unknown, catastrophes are just as 
probable as uniformity. If a volcano may repose 
for a thousand years, and then break out and destroy 
a city ; why may not another volcano repose for ten 
thousand years, and then destroy a continent ; or if 
a continent, why not the whole habitable surface of 
the earth? 

4. Cycle of Uniformity indefinite. — But this argu- 
ment may be put in another form. When it is said 
that the course of nature is uniform, the assertion 
is not intended to exclude certain smaller variations 
of violence and rest, such as we have just spoken 
of ; — alternations of activity and repose in volcanos ; 
or earthquakes, deluges, and storms, interposed in a 
more tranquil state of things. With regard to such 
occurrences, terrible as they appear at the time, they 
may not much affect the average rate of change ; 
there may be a cycle, though an irregular one, of 
rapid and slow change ; and if such cycles go on suc- 
ceeding each other, we may still call the order of 
nature uniform, notwithstanding the periods of vio- 
lence which it involves. The maximum and minimum 
intensities of the forces of mutation alternate with 



110 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



one another; and we may estimate the average course 
of nature as that which corresponds to something 
between the two extremes. 

But if we thus attempt to maintain the uni- 
formity of nature by representing it as a series of 
cycles, we find that we cannot discover, in this con- 
ception, any solid ground for excluding catastrophes. 
What is the length of that cycle the repetition of 
which constitutes uniformity? What interval from 
the maximum to the minimum does it admit of? 
We may take for our cycle a hundred or a thousand 
years, but evidently such a proceeding is altogether 
arbitrary. We may mark our cycles by the greatest 
known paroxysms of volcanic and terremotive agency, 
but this procedure is no less indefinite and incon- 
clusive than the other. 

But further ; since the cycle in which violence 
and repose alternate is thus indefinite in its length 
and in its range of activity, what ground have we for 
assuming more than one such cycle, extending from 
the origin of things to the present time ? Why may 
we not suppose the maximum force of the causes of 
change to have taken place at the earliest period, 
and the tendency towards the minimum to have gone 
on ever since ? Or instead of only one cycle, there 
may have been several, but of such length that our 
historical period forms a portion only of the last ; — 
the feeblest portion of the latest cycle. And thus 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 



Ill 



violence and repose may alternate upon a scale of 
time and intensity so large, that man's experience 
supplies no evidence enabling him to estimate the 
amount. The course of things is uniform, to an 
Intelligence which can embrace the succession of 
several cycles, but it is catastrophic to the contem- 
plation of man, whose survey can grasp a part only 
of one cycle. And thus the hypothesis of uniformity, 
since it cannot exclude degrees of change, nor limit 
the range of these degrees, nor define the interval of 
their recurrence, cannot possess any essential simpli- 
city which, previous to inquiry, gives it a claim upon 
our assent superior to that of the opposite cata- 
strophic hypothesis. 

5. Uniformitarian Arguments are Negative only. — 
There is an opposite tendency in the mode of main- 
taining the catastrophist and the uniformitarian opi- 
nions, which depends upon their fundamental prin- 
ciples, and shows itself in all the controversies 
between them. The Catastrophist is affirmative, the 
Uniformitarian is negative in his assertions : the 
former is constantly attempting to construct a theory ; 
the latter delights in demolishing all theories. The 
one is constantly bringing fresh evidence of some 
great past event, or series of events, of a striking 
and definite kind; his antagonist is at every step 
explaining away the evidence, and showing that it 
proves nothing. One geologist adduces his proofs 



112 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



of a vast universal deluge ; but another endeavours 
to show that the proofs do not establish either the 
universality or the vastness of such an event. The 
inclined broken edges of a certain formation covered 
with their own fragments beneath superjacent hori- 
zontal deposits are at one time supposed to prove a 
catastrophic breaking up of the earlier strata ; but 
this opinion is controverted by showing that the same 
formations, when pursued into other countries, ex- 
hibit a uniform gradation from the lower to the 
upper, with no trace of violence. Extensive and 
lofty elevations of the coast, continents of igneous 
rock, at first appear to indicate operations far more 
gigantic than those which now occur ; but attempts 
are soon made to show that time only is wanting 
to enable the present age to rival the past in the 
production of such changes. Each new fact adduced 
by the catastrophist is at first striking and apparently 
convincing ; but as it becomes familiar, it strikes the 
imagination less powerfully ; and the uniformitarian, 
constantly labouring to produce some imitation of 
it by the machinery which he has so well studied, 
at last in every case seems to -himself to succeed, 
so far as to destroy the effect of his opponent's 
evidence. 

This is so with regard to more remote, as well 
as with regard to immediate evidences of change. 
When it is ascertained that in every part of the 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 1 ] 3 

earths crust the temperature increases as we de- 
scend below the surface, at first this fact seems to 
indicate a central heat : and a central heat naturally 
suggests an earlier state of the mass, in which it was 
incandescent, and from which it is now cooling. But 
this original incandescence of the globe of the earth 
is manifestly an entire violation of the present course 
of things ; it belongs to the catastrophist view, and 
the advocates of uniformity have to explain it away. 
Accordingly, one of them holds that this increase of 
heat in descending below the surface may very pos- 
sibly not go on all the way to the center. The heat 
which increases at first as we descend, may, he con- 
ceives, afterwards decrease ; and he suggests causes 
which may have produced such a succession of hotter 
and colder shells within the mass of the earth. I 
have mentioned this suggestion in the History of 
Geology ; and have given my reasons for believing it 
altogether untenable *. Other persons also, desirous 
of reconciling this subterraneous heat with the tenet 
of uniformity, have offered another suggestion : — that 
the warmth or incandescence of the interior parts of 
the earth does not arise out of an originally hot 
condition from which it is gradually cooling, but 
results from chemical action constantly going on 
among the materials of the earth's substance. And 



* Hist. Ind. ScL, in. 562, and note. 



114 



PAL^TIOLOGY. 



thus new attempts are perpetually making, to escape 
from the cogency of the reasonings which send us 
towards an original state of things different from 
the present. Those who theorize concerning an 
origin go on building up the fabric of their specu- 
lations, while those who think such theories unphilo- 
sophical, ever and anon dig away the foundation of 
this structure. As we have already said, the uni- 
formitarian's doctrines are a collection of negatives. 

This is so entirely the case, that the uniformita- 
rian would for the most part shrink from maintaining 
as positive tenets the explanations which he so wil- 
lingly uses as instruments of controversy. He puts 
forward his suggestions as difficulties, but he will not 
stand by them as doctrines. And this is in accord- 
ance with his general tendency ; for any of his hypo- 
theses, if insisted upon as positive theories, would be 
found inconsistent with the assertion of uniformity. 
For example, the nebular hypothesis appears to give 
to the history of the heavens an aspect which ob- 
literates all special acts of creation, for, according 
to that hypothesis, new planetary systems are con- 
stantly forming ; but when asserted as the origin of 
our own solar system, it brings with it an original 
incandescence, and an origin of the organic world. 
And if, instead of using the chemical theory of sub- 
terraneous heat to neutralize the evidence of original 
incandescence, we assert it as a positive tenet, we 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 1 ] 5 

can no longer maintain the infinite past duration 
of the earth ; for chemical forces, as well as mecha- 
nical, tend to equilibrium ; and that condition once 
attained, their efficacy ceases. Chemical affinities 
tend to form new compounds ; and though, when 
many and various elements are mingled together, 
the play of synthesis and analysis may go on for a 
long time, it must at last end. If, for instance, a 
large portion of the earth's mass were originally pure 
potassium, we can imagine violent igneous action to 
go on so long as any part remained unoxidized ; but 
when the oxidation of the whole has once taken 
place, this action must be at an end ; for there is 
in the hypothesis no agency which can reproduce 
the deoxidized metal. Thus a perpetual motion is 
impossible in chemistry, as it is in mechanics; and 
a theory of constant change continued through in- 
finite time, is untenable when asserted upon chemical, 
no less than upon mechanical principles. And thus 
the scepticism of the uniformitarian is of force only 
so long as it is employed against the dogmatism 
of the catastrophist. When the doubts are erected 
into dogmas, they are no longer consistent with the 
tenet of uniformity. When the negations become 
affirmations, the negation of an origin vanishes also. 

6. Uniformity in the Organic World. — In speak- 
ing of the violent and sudden changes which con- 
stitute catastrophes, our thoughts naturally turn at 



116 



PALiE TIOLOGY. 



first to great mechanical and physical effects ; — rup- 
tures and displacements of strata ; extensive submer- 
sions and emersions of land ; rapid changes of 
temperature. But the catastrophes which we have 
to consider in geology affect the organic as well as 
the inorganic world. The sudden extinction of one 
collection of species, and the introduction of another 
in their place, is a catastrophe, even if unaccom- 
panied by mechanical violence. Accordingly, the 
antagonism of the catastrophist and uniformitarian 
school has shown itself in this department of the 
subject, as well as in the other. When geologists 
had first discovered that the successive strata are 
each distinguished by appropriate organic fossils, they 
assumed at once that each of these collections of 
living things belonged to a separate creation. But 
this conclusion, as I have already said, Mr. Lyell 
has attempted to invalidate, by proving that in the 
existing order of things, some species become extinct ; 
and by suggesting it as possible, that in the same 
order it may be true that new species are from time 
to time produced, even in the present course of 
nature. And in this, as in the other part of the 
subject, he calls in the aid of vast periods of time, 
in order that the violence of the changes may be 
softened down: and he appears disposed to believe 
that the actual extinction and creation of species 
may be so slow as to excite no more notice than 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 



117 



it has hitherto obtained; and yet may be rapid 
enough, considering the immensity of geological 
periods, to produce such a succession of different 
collections of species as we find in the strata of the 
earth's surface. 

7. Origin of the present Organic World. — The 
last great event in the history of the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms was that by which their various 
tribes were placed in their present seats. And we 
may form various hypotheses with regard to the 
sudden or gradual manner in which we may suppose 
this distribution to have taken place. We may 
assume that at the beginning of the present order 
of things, a stock of each species was placed in the 
vegetable or animal province to ' which it belongs, 
by some cause out of the common order of nature ; 
or we may take a uniformitarian view of the sub- 
ject, and suppose that the provinces of the organic 
world derived their population from some anterior 
state of things by the operation of natural causes. 

Nothing has been pointed out in the existing 
order of things which has any analogy or resem- 
blance, of any valid kind, to that creative energy 
which must be exerted in the production of a new 
species. And to assume the introduction of new 
species as a part of the order of nature, without 
pointing out any natural fact with which such an 
event can be classed, would be to reject creation 



118 



PALtETIOLOGY. 



by an arbitrary act. Hence, even on natural grounds, 
the most intelligible view of the history of the animal 
and vegetable kingdoms seems to be, that each 
period which is marked by a distinct collection of 
species forms a cycle ; and that at the beginning 
of each such cycle a creative power was exerted, of 
a kind to which there was nothing at all analogous 
in the succeeding part of the same cycle. If it be 
urged that in some cases the same species, or the 
same genus, runs through two geological formations, 
which must, on other grounds, be referred to dif- 
ferent cycles of creative energy, we may reply that 
the creation of many new species does not imply the 
extinction of all the old ones. 

Thus we are led by our reasonings to this view, 
that the present order of things was commenced by 
an act of creative power entirely different to any 
agency which has been exerted since. None of the 
influences which have modified the present races of 
animals and plants since they were placed in their 
habitations on the earth's surface can have had any 
efficacy in producing them at first. We are neces- 
sarily driven to assume, as the beginning of the 
present cycle of organic nature, an event not included 
in the course of nature. And we may remark that 
this necessity is the more cogent, precisely because 
other cycles have preceded the present. 

8. Nebular Origin of the Solar System. — If we 



DOCTRINE OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 119 



attempt to apply the same antithesis of opinion (the 
doctrines of catastrophe and uniformity,) to the 
other subjects of palsetiological science, we shall be 
led to similar conclusions. Thus if we turn our 
attention to astronomical paketiology, we perceive 
that the nebular hypothesis has a uniformitarian 
tendency. According to this hypothesis the forma- 
tion of this our system of sun, planets, and satellites, 
was a process of the same kind as those which are 
still going on in the heavens. One after another, 
nebulae condense into separate masses, which begin 
to revolve about each other by mechanical necessity, 
and form systems of which our solar system is a 
finished example. But we may remark, that the 
uniformitarian doctrine on this subject rests on most 
unstable foundations. We have as yet only very 
vague and imperfect reasonings to show that by 
such condensation a material system such as ours 
could result ; and the introduction of organized 
beings into such a material system is utterly out of 
the reach of our philosophy. Here again, therefore, 
we are led to regard the present order of the world 
as pointing towards an origin altogether of a different 
kind from anything which our material science can 
grasp. 

9. Origin of Languages. — We may venture to 
say that we should be led to the same conclusion 
once more, if we were to take into our consideration 



120 PALiETIOLOGY. 

those palsetiological sciences which are beyond the 
domain of matter; for instance, the history of 
languages. We may explain many of the differences 
and changes which we become acquainted with, by 
referring to the action of causes of change which 
still operate. But what glossologist will venture to 
declare that the efficacy of such causes has been 
uniform ; that the influences which mould a lan- 
guage, or make one language differ from others of 
the same stock, operated formerly with no more 
efficacy than they exercise now. " Where," as has 
elsewhere been asked, " do we now find a language 
in the process of formation, unfolding itself in in- 
flexions, terminations, changes of vowels by gram- 
matical relations, such as characterize the oldest 
known languages?" Again, as another proof how 
little the history of languages suggests to the philo- 
sophical glossologist the persuasion of a uniform 
action of the causes of change, I may refer to the 
conjecture of Dr. Prichard, that the varieties of 
language produced by the separation of one stock 
into several, have been greater and greater as we 
go backwards in history: — that* the formation of 
sister dialects from a common language, (as the 
Scandinavian, German, and Saxon dialects from the 
Teutonic, or the Gaelic, Erse and Welsh from the 



* Researches, n.. 224. 



DOCTRINES OF CATASTROPHES, ETC. 121 

Celtic,) belongs to the first millennium before the 
Christian era; while the formation of cognate lan- 
guages of the same family, as the Sanskrit, Latin, 
Greek and Gothic, must be placed at least two 
thousand years before that era; and at a still 
earlier period took place the separation of the great 
families themselves, the Indo-European, Semitic, and 
others, in which it is now difficult to trace the 
features of a common origin. No hypothesis except 
one of this kind will explain the existence of the 
families, groups, and dialects of languages, which we 
find in existence. Yet this is an entirely different 
view from that which the hypothesis of the uniform 
progress of change would give. And thus in the 
earliest stages of man's career, the revolutions of 
language must have been, even by the evidence of 
the theoretical history of language itself, of an order 
altogether different from any which have taken place 
within the recent history of man. And we may 
add, that as the early stages of the progress of 
language must have been widely different from those 
later ones of which we can in some measure trace 
the natural causes, we cannot place the origin of 
language in any point of view in which it comes under 
the jurisdiction of natural causation at all. 

10. No Natural Origin discoverable. — We are 
thus led by a survey of several of the palsetiological 
sciences to a confirmation of the principle formerly 
6 



122 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



asserted*, That in no paketiological science has 
man been able to arrive at a beginning which is 
homogeneous with the known course of events. We 
can in such sciences often go very far back; — 
determine many of the remote circumstances of the 
past series of events ; — ascend to a point which 
seems to be near the origin ; — and limit the hypo- 
theses respecting the origin itself : — but philosophers 
never have demonstrated, and, so far as we can 
judge, probably never will be able to demonstrate, 
what was that primitive state of things from which 
the progressive course of the world took its first 
departure. In all these paths of research, when 
we travel far backwards, the aspect of the earlier 
portions becomes very different from that of the 
advanced part on which we now stand ; but in all 
cases the path is lost in obscurity as it is traced 
backwards towards its starting point : — it becomes 
not only invisible, but unimaginable ; it is not only 
an interruption, but an abyss, which interposes it- 
self between us and any intelligible beginning of 
things. 



* Hist. Ind. SeL, hi., 581. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 123 



RELATION OF TRADITION TO PAL^ETIOLOGY. 

1. Importance of Tradition. — Since the Palgetio- 
logical Sciences have it for their business to study 
the train of past events produced by natural causes 
down to the present time, the knowledge concerning 
such events which is supplied by the remembrance 
and records of man, in whatever form, must have an 
important bearing upon these sciences. All changes 
in the condition and extent of land and sea, which 
have taken place within man's observation, all effects 
of deluges, sea-waves, rivers, springs, volcanos, earth- 
quakes, and the like, which come within the reach of 
human history, have a strong interest for the palse- 
tiologist. Nor is he less concerned in all recorded 
instances of the modification of the forms and habits 
of plants and animals, by the operations of man, or 
by transfer from one land to another. And when we 
come to the Palsetiology of Language, of Art, of 
Civilization, we find our subject still more closely 
connected with history ; for in truth these are 
historical, no less than palaetiological investigations. 
But, confining ourselves at present to the material 
sciences, we may observe that though the impor- 
tance of the information which tradition gives us, 
in the sciences now under our consideration, as, for 
instance geology, has long been tacitly recognised ; 
yet it is only recently that geologists have em- 

6—2 



124 



PALjETIOLOGY. 



ployed themselves in collecting their historical facts 
upon such a scale and with such comprehensive views 
as are required by the interest and use of collections 
of this kind. The Essay of Von Hoff* On the 
Natural Alterations in the Surface of the Earth which 
are proved by Tradition, was the work which first 
opened the eyes of geologists to the extent and im- 
portance of this kind of investigation. Since that 
time the same path of research has been pursued 
with great perseverance by others, especially by Mr. 
Lyell ; and is now justly considered as an essential 
portion of geology. 

2. Connexion of Tradition and Science. — Events 
which we might naturally expect to have some 
bearing on geology, are recorded in the historical 
writings which, even on mere human grounds, have 
the strongest claim to our respect as records of the 
early history of the world, and are confirmed by 
the traditions of various nations all over the globe, 
namely, the formation of the earth and its popula- 
tion, and a subsequent deluge. It has been made a 
matter of controversy how the narrative of these 
events is to be understood, so as to make it agree 
with the facts which an examination of the earth's 
surface and of its vegetable and animal population 
discloses to us. Such controversies, when they are 



* Vol i., 1822; Vol. ii., 1824. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 125 



considered as merely archaeological, may occur in 
any of the palaetiological sciences. We may have 
to compare and to reconcile the evidence of existing 
phenomena with that of historical tradition. But 
under some circumstances this process of conciliation 
may assume an interest of another kind, on which 
we will make a few remarks. 

3. Natural and Providential History of the 

World We may contemplate the existence of 

man upon the earth, his origin and his progress, 
in the same mannner as we contemplate the ex- 
istence of any other race of animals ; namely, in 
a purely palaetiological view. We may consider 
how far our knowledge of laws of causation enables 
us to explain his diffusion and migration, his dif- 
ferences and resemblances, his actions and works. 
And this is the view of man as a member of the 
natural course of things. 

But man, at the same time the contemplator 
and the subject of his own contemplation, endowed 
with faculties and powers, which make him a being 
of a different nature from other animals, cannot 
help regarding his own actions and enjoyments, 
his recollections and his hopes, under an aspect 
quite different from any that we have yet had pre- 
sented to us. We have been endeavouring to place 
in a clear light the Fundamental Ideas, such as 
that of Cause, on which depends our knowledge 



126 



PALyETIOLOGY. 



of the natural course of things. But there are 
other Ideas to which man necessarily refers his 
actions; he is led by his nature, not only to con- 
sider his own actions, and those of his fellow-men, 
as springing out of this or that cause, leading to 
this or that material result; but also as good or 
bad, as what they ought or ought not to be. He 
has Ideas of moral relations as well as those Ideas 
of material relations with which we have hitherto 
been occupied. He is a moral as well as a natural 
agent. 

Contemplating himself and the world around 
him by the light of his Moral Ideas, man is led 
to the conviction that his moral faculties were be- 
stowed upon him by design and for a purpose ; 
that he is the subject of a moral government ; that 
the course of the world is directed by the Power 
which governs it, to the unfolding and perfecting 
of man's moral nature ; that this guidance may be 
traced in the career of individuals and of the world ; 
that there is a providential as well as a natural 
course of things. 

Yet this view is beset by ho small difficulties. 
The full developement of man's moral faculties ; — 
the perfection of his nature up to the measure of 
his own ideas ; — the adaptation of his moral being 
to an ultimate destination, by its transit through 
a world full of moral evil, in which each has his 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 127 

share ; — are effects for which the economy of the 
world appears to contain no adequate provision. 
Man, though aware of his moral nature, and ready 
to believe in an ultimate destination of purity and 
blessedness, is too feeble to resist the temptation 
of evil, and to restore his purity when once lost. 
He cannot but look for some confirmation of that 
providential order which he has begun to believe ; 
some provision for those deficiencies in his moral 
condition which he has begun to feel. 

He looks at the history of the world, and he 
finds that at a certain period it offers to him the 
promise of what he seeks. When the natural 
powers of man had been developed to their full 
extent, and were beginning to exhibit symptoms of 
decay ; when the intellectual progress of the world 
appeared to have reached its limit, without sup- 
plying man's moral needs ; we find the great Epoch 
in the Providential history of the world. We find 
the announcement of a Dispensation by which man's 
deficiencies shall be supplied and his aspirations ful- 
filled : we find a provision for the purification, the 
support, and the ultimate beatification of those who 
use the provided means. And thus the providential 
course of the world becomes consistent and intel- 
ligible. 

4 The Sacred Narrative. — But with the new 
Dispensation, we receive, not only an account of 



128 



PALvETIOLOGY. 



its own scheme and history, but also a written 
narrative of the providential course of the world 
from the earliest times, and even from its first 
creation. This narrative is recognized and autho- 
rized by the new dispensation, and accredited by 
some of the same evidences as the dispensation 
itself. That the existence of such a sacred nar- 
rative should be a part of the providential order 
of things, cannot but appear natural ; but naturally 
also, the study of it leads to some difficulties. 

The Sacred Narrative in some of its earliest 
portions speaks of natural objects and occurrences 
respecting them. In the very beginning of the 
course of the world, we may readily believe (in- 
deed, as we have seen in the last chapter, our 
scientific researches lead us to believe) that such 
occurrences were very different from anything which 
now takes place ; — different to an extent and in 
a manner which we cannot estimate. Now the 
narrative must speak of objects and occurrences in 
the words and phrases which have derived their 
meaning from their application to the existing 
natural state of things. When applied to an initial 
supernatural state therefore, these words and phrases 
cannot help being to us obscure and mysterious, 
perhaps ambiguous and seemingly contradictory. 

5. Difficulties in interpreting the Sacred Nar~ 
rathe. — The moral and providential relations of 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 129 

man's condition are so much more important to 
him than mere natural relations, that at first we 
may well suppose he will accept the Sacred Nar- 
rative, as not only unquestionable in its true im- 
port, but also as a guide in his views even of mere 
natural relations. He will try to modify the con- 
ceptions which he entertains of objects and their 
properties, so that the Sacred Narrative of the 
supernatural condition shall retain the first meaning 
which he had put upon it in virtue of his own 
habits in the usage of language. 

But man is so constituted that he cannot per- 
sist in this procedure. The powers and tendencies 
of his intellect are such that he cannot help try- 
ing to attain true conceptions of objects and their 
properties by the study of things themselves. For 
instance, when he at first read of a firmament 
dividing the waters above from the waters below, 
he perhaps conceived a transparent floor in the 
skies, on which the superior waters rested which 
descend in rain ; but as his observations and his 
reasonings satisfied him that such a floor could not 
exist, he became willing to allow (as St. Augustin 
allowed) that the waters above the firmament are 
in a state of vapour. And in like manner in other 
subjects, men, as their views of nature became more 
distinct and precise, modified, so far as it was neces- 

6—5 



130 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



sary for consistency's sake, their first rude interpre- 
tations of the Sacred Narrative ; so that, without in 
any degree losing its import as a view of the provi- 
dential course of the world, it should be so conceived 
as not to contradict what they knew of the natural 
order of things. 

But this accommodation was not always made 
without painful struggles and angry controversies. 
When men had conceived the occurrences of the 
Sacred Narrative in a particular manner, they could 
not readily and willingly adopt a new mode of 
conception ; and they resisted all attempts to recom- 
mend it to them, as attacks upon the sacredness 
of the Narrative. They had clothed their belief 
of the workings of Providence in certain images ; 
and they clung to those images with the persuasion 
that without them their belief could not subsist. 
Thus they imagined to themselves that the earth 
was a flat floor, solidly and broadly laid for the. 
convenience of man, and they felt as if the kind- 
ness of Providence was disparaged, when it was 
maintained that the earth was a globe held toge- 
ther only by the mutual attraction of its parts. 

The most memorable instance of a struggle of 
this kind is to be found in the circumstances which 
attended the introduction of the Heliocentric Theory 
of Copernicus to general acceptance. On this con- 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 131 

troversy I have already made some remaks in the 
History of Science*, and have attempted to draw 
from it some lessons which may be useful to us 
when any similar conflict of opinions may occur. 
I will here add a few reflections with a similar 
view. 

6. Such difficulties inevitable — In the first place, 
I remark that such modifications of the current in- 
terpretation of the words of Scripture appear to be 
an inevitable consequence of the progressive charac- 
ter of Natural Science. Science is constantly teach- 
ing us to describe known facts in new language, but 
the language of Scripture is always the same. And 
not only so, but the language of Scripture is neces- 
sarily adapted to the common state of man's in- 
tellectual developement, in which he is supposed 
not to be possessed of science. Hence the phrases 
used by Scripture are precisely those which science 
soon teaches man to consider as inaccurate. Yet 
they are not on that account the less fitted for their 
proper purpose : for if any terms had been used, 
adapted to a more advanced state of knowledge, 
they must have been unintelligible among those to 
whom the Scripture was first addressed. If the 
Jews had been told that water existed in the 
clouds in small drops, they would have marvelled 



* Hist. Ind. ScL, I., 401. 



132 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



that it did not constantly descend ; and to have 
explained the reason of this, would have been to 
teach Atmology in the sacred writings. If they 
had read in their Scripture that the earth was a 
sphere, when it appeared to be a plain, they would 
only have been disturbed in their thoughts, or 
driven to some wild and baseless imaginations by 
a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine 
Speaker, instead of saying that he would set his 
bow in the clouds, had been made to declare that 
he would give to water the property of refracting 
different colours at different angles, how utterly 
unmeaning to the hearers would the words have 
been ! And in these cases, the expressions, being 
unintelligible, startling, and bewildering, would have 
been such as tended to unfit the Sacred Narrative 
for its place in the providential dispensation of 
the world. 

Accordingly, in the great controversy which took 
place in Galileo's time between the defenders of the 
then customary interpretations of Scripture, and the 
assertors of the Copernican system of the universe, 
when the innovators were upbraided with main- 
taining opinions contrary to Scripture, they replied 
that Scripture was not intended to teach men as- 
tronomy, and that it expressed the acts of divine 
power in images which were suited to the ideas of 
unscientific men. To speak of the rising and set- 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 1S3 

ting and travelling of the sun, of the fixity and 
of the foundations of the earth, was to use the 
only language which would have made the Sacred 
Narrative intelligible. To extract from these and 
the like expressions doctrines of science, was, they 
declared, in the highest degree unjustifiable; and 
such a course could lead, they held, to no result 
but a weakening of the authority of Scripture in 
proportion as its credit was identified with that of 
these modes of applying it. And this judgment 
has since been generally assented to by those who 
most reverence and value the study of the designs 
of Providence as well as that of the works of nature. 

7. Science tells us nothing concerning Creation. 
— Other apparent difficulties arise from the accounts 
given in the Scripture of the first origin of the 
world in which we live : for example, light is repre- 
sented as created before the sun. With regard to 
difficulties of this kind, it appears that we may 
derive some instruction from the result to which 
we were led in the last chapter ; — namely, that 
in the sciences which trace the progress of natural 
occurrences, we can in no case go back to an origin, 
but in every instance appear to find ourselves sepa- 
rated from it by a state of things, and an order 
of events, of a kind altogether different from those 
which come under our experience. The thread of 
induction respecting the natural course of the world 



134 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



snaps in our fingers, when we try to ascertain where 
its beginning is. Since, then, science can teach us 
nothing positive respecting the beginning of things, 
she can neither contradict nor confirm what is 
taught by Scripture on that subject; and thus, as 
it is unworthy timidity to fear contradiction, so is 
it ungrounded presumption to look for confirmation 
in such cases. The providential history of the world 
has its own beginning, and its own evidence ; and 
we can only render the system insecure, by making 
it lean on our material sciences. If any one were 
to suggest that the nebular hypothesis countenances 
the Scripture history of the formation of this system, 
by showing how the luminous matter of the sun 
might exist previous to the sun itself, we should 
act wisely in rejecting such an attempt to weave 
together these two heterogeneous threads; — the 
one a part of a providential scheme, the other a 
fragment of physical speculation. 

We shall best learn those lessons of the true 
philosophy of science which it is our object to col- 
lect, by attending to portions of science which have 
gone through such crises as we are now consider- 
ing ; nor is it requisite, for this purpose, to bring 
forwards any subjects which are still under discus- 
sion. It may, however, be mentioned that such 
maxims as we are now endeavouring to establish, 
and the one before us in particular, bear with a 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 135 

peculiar force upon those Palsetiological Sciences 
of which we have been treating in the present 
Book. 

8. Scientific mews, when familiar, do not disturb 
the authority of Scripture. — There is another reflec- 
tion which may serve to console and encourage us 
in the painful struggles which thus take place, be- 
tween those who maintain interpretations of Scrip- 
ture already prevalent and those who contend for 
such new ones as the new discoveries of science 
require. It is this ; — that though the new opinion 
is resisted by one party as something destructive 
of the credit of Scripture and the reverence which 
is its due, yet, in fact, when the new interpreta- 
tion has been generally established and incorporated 
with men's current thoughts, it ceases to disturb 
their views of the authority of the Scripture or 
of the truth of its teaching. When the language 
of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has 
become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas 
which it calls up are quite as reconeileable as the 
former ones were with the most entire acceptance 
of the providential dispensation. And when this 
has been found to be the case, all cultivated per- 
sons look back with surprise at the mistake of those 
who thought that the essence of the revelation was 
involved in their own arbitrary version of some col- 
lateral circumstance in the revealed narrative. At 



136 



PAL^TIOLOGY. 



the present day, we can hardly conceive how rea- 
sonable men could ever have imagined that religious 
reflections on the stability of the earth, and the 
beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve 
round it, would be interfered with by an acknow- 
ledgement that this rest and motion are apparent 
only*. And thus the authority of revelation is not 
shaken by any changes introduced by the progress 
of science in the mode of interpreting expressions 
which describe physical objects and occurrences; 
provided the new interpretation is admitted at a 
proper season, and in a proper spirit ; so as to 
soften, as much as possible, both the public con- 
troversies and the private scruples which almost 
inevitably accompany such an alteration. 

9 . When should old Interpretations be given up ? 
— But the question then occurs, What is the pro- 
per season for a religious and enlightened com- 
mentator to make such a change in the current 
interpretation of sacred Scripture? At what period 
ought the established exposition of a passage to be 
given up, and a new mode of understanding the 
passage, such as is, or seems to be, required by new 
discoveries respecting the laws of nature, accepted 
in its place \ It is plain, that to introduce such an 
alteration lightly and hastily would be a procedure 



* I have here borrowed a sentence or two from my own History. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 137 



fraught with inconvenience ; for if the change were 
made in such a manner, it might be afterwards dis- 
covered that it had been adopted without sufficient 
reason, and that it was necessary to reinstate the 
old exposition. And the minds of the readers of 
Scripture, always to a certain extent and for a time 
disturbed by the subversion of their long-established 
notions, would be distressed without any need, and 
might be seriously unsettled. While, on the other 
hand, a too protracted and obstinate resistance to 
the innovation, on the part of the scriptural exposi- 
tors, would tend to identify, at least in the minds 
of many, the authority of the Scripture with the 
truth of the exposition; and therefore would bring 
discredit upon the revealed word, when the esta- 
blished interpretation was finally proved to be un- 
tenable. 

A rule on this subject, propounded by some 
of the most enlightened dignitaries of the Roman 
Catholic church, on the occasion of the great Co- 
pernican controversy begun by Galileo, seems well 
worthy of our attention. The following was the 
opinion given by Cardinal Bellarmine at the time: 
— " When a demonstration shall be found to establish 
the earth's motion, it will be proper to interpret 
the sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have 
hitherto been interpreted in those passages where 
mention is made of the stability of the earth and 



138 



PALuETJOLOGY. 



movement of the heavens. 1 ' This appears to be a 
judicious and reasonable maxim for such cases in 
general. So long as the supposed scientific dis- 
covery is doubtful, the exposition of the meaning 
of Scripture given by commentators of established 
credit is not wantonly to be disturbed : but when 
a scientific theory, irreconcileable with this ancient 
interpretation, is clearly proved, we must give up 
the interpretation, and seek some new mode of 
understanding the passage in question, by means 
of which it may be consistent with what we know ; 
for if it be not, our conception of the things so 
described is no longer consistent with itself. 

It may be said that this rule is indefinite, for 
who shall decide when a new theory is completely 
demonstrated, and the old interpretation become 
untenable? But to this we may reply, that if the 
rule be assented to, its application will not be very 
difficult. For when men have admitted as a general 
rule, that the current interpretations of scriptural 
expressions respecting natural objects and events 
may possibly require, and in some cases certainly 
will require, to be abandoned, and new ones ad- 
mitted, they will hardly allow themselves to contend 
for such interpretations as if they were essential 
parts of revelation ; and will look upon the change 
of exposition, whether it come sooner or later, with- 
out alarm or anger. And when men lend them- 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 



189 



selves to the progress of truth in this spirit, it is 
not of any material importance at what period a 
new and satisfactory interpretation of the scriptural 
difficulty is found; since a scientific exactness in 
our apprehension of the meaning of such passages 
as are now referred to is very far from being 
essential to our full acceptance of revelation. 

10. In what Spirit should the Change be accepted? 
— Still these revolutions in scriptural interpretation 
must always have in them something which distresses 
and disturbs religious communities. And such un- 
easy feelings will take a different shape, according as 
the community acknowledges or rejects a paramount 
interpretative authority in its religious leaders. In 
the case in which the interpretation of the Church 
is binding upon all its members, the more placid 
minds rest in peace upon the ancient exposition, 
till the spiritual authorities announce that the time 
for the adoption of a new view has arrived ; but 
in these circumstances, the more stirring and in- 
quisitive minds, which cannot refrain from the pur- 
suit of new truths and exact conceptions, are led 
to opinions which, being contrary to those of the 
Church, are held to be sinful. On the other hand, 
if the religious constitution of the community allow 
and encourage each man to study and interpret for 
himself the Sacred Writings, we are met by evils 
of another kind. In this case, although, by the 



140 



PAL^ETIOLOGV. 



unforced influence of admired commentators, there 
may prevail a general agreement in the usual in- 
terpretation of difficult passages, yet as each reader 
of the Scripture looks upon the sense which he has 
adopted as being his own interpretation, he main- 
tains it, not with the tranquil acquiescence of one 
who has deposited his judgment in the hands of 
his Church, but with the keenness and strenuous- 
ness of self-love. In such a state of things, though 
no judicial severities can be employed against the 
innovators, there may arise more angry controversies 
than in the other case. 

It is impossible to overlook the lesson which 
here offers itself, that it is in the highest degree 
unwise in the friends of religion, whether individuals 
or communities, unnecessarily to embark their credit 
in expositions of Scripture on matters which apper- 
tain to natural science. By delivering physical 
doctrines as the teaching of revelation, religion may 
lose much, but cannot gain anything. This maxim 
of practical wisdom has often been urged by Christian 
writers. Thus St. Augustin says*: "In obscure 
matters and things far removed from our senses, 
if we read anything, even in the divine Scripture, 
which may produce diverse opinions without damag- 
ing the faith which we cherish, let us not rush 



* Lib. i. de Genesi, cap. xviii. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 141 



headlong by positive assertion to either the one 
opinion or the other; lest, when a more thorough 
discussion has shown the opinion which we had 
adopted to be false, our faith may fall with it : and 
we should be found contending, not for the doc- 
trine of the sacred Scriptures, but for our own ; 
endeavouring to make our doctrine to be that of 
the Scriptures, instead of taking the doctrine of 
the' Scriptures to be ours." And in nearly the 
same spirit, at the time of the Copernican contro- 
versy, it was thought proper to append to the work 
of Copernicus a postil, to say that the work was 
written to account for the phenomena, and that 
people must not run on blindly and condemn either 
of the opposite opinions. Even when the Inquisition, 
in 1616, thought itself compelled to pronounce a 
decision upon this subject, the verdict was delivered 
in very moderate language ; — that " the doctrine 
of the earth's motion appeared to be contrary to 
Scripture :" and yet, moderate as this expression 
is, it has been blamed by judicious members of 
the Roman church as deciding a point such as 
religious authorities ought not to pretend to decide ; 
and has brought upon that church no ordinary 
weight of general condemnation. Kepler pointed 
out, in his lively manner, the imprudence of em- 
ploying the force of religious authorities on such 
subjects: Acies dolabrw in f err urn illisa, postea nec 



142 



PAL^ETIOLOGY. 



in lignum mlet amplius. Capiat hoc cujus interest. 
" If you will try to chop iron, the axe becomes 
unable to cut even wood." 

11. In what Spirit should the Change he urged? — 
But while we thus endeavour to show in what man- 
ner the interpreters of Scripture may most safely 
and most properly accept the discoveries of science, 
we must not forget that there may be errors com- 
mitted on the other side also ; and that men of 
science, in bringing forward views which may for a 
time disturb the minds of lovers of Scripture, should 
consider themselves as bound by strict rules of can- 
dour, moderation, and prudence. Intentionally to 
make their supposed discoveries a means of dis- 
crediting, contradicting, or slighting the sacred 
Scriptures, or the authority of religion, is in them 
unpardonable. As men who make the science of 
Truth the business of their lives, and are persuaded 
of her genuine superiority, and certain of her ulti- 
mate triumph, they are peculiarly bound to urge 
her claims in a calm and temperate spirit ; not for- 
getting that there are other kinds of truth besides 
that which they peculiarly study. They may pro- 
perly reject authority in matters of science; but 
they are to leave it its proper office in matters of 
religion. I may here again quote Kepler's expres- 
sions: "In Theology we balance authorities, in Philo- 
sophy we weigh reasons. A holy man was Lactantius 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 



143 



who denied that the earth was round ; a holy man 
was Augustin, who granted the rotundity, but denied 
the antipodes ; a holy thing to me is the Inquisition, 
which allows the smallness of the earth, but denies 
its motion ; but more holy to me is Truth ; and 
hence I prove, from philosophy, that the earth is 
round, and inhabited on every side, of small size, 
and in motion among the stars, — and this I do with 
no disrespect to the Doctors." I the more willingly 
quote such a passage from Kepler, because the entire 
ingenuousness and sincere piety of his character does 
not allow us to suspect in him anything of hypocrisy 
or latent irony. That similar professions of respect 
may be made ironically, we have a noted example 
in the celebrated Introduction to Galileo's Dialogue 
on the Copernican System ; probably the part which 
was most offensive to the authorities. " Some years 
ago," he begins, " a wholesome edict was promul- 
gated at Rome, which, in order to check the perilous 
scandals of the present age, imposed silence upon 
the Pythagorean opinion of the mobility of the earth. 
There were not wanting," he proceeds, " persons who 
rashly asserted that this decree was the result, not 
of a judicious inquiry, but of passion ill-informed ; 
and complaints were heard that counsellors, utterly 
unacquainted with astronomical observation, ought 
not to be allowed, with their sudden prohibitions, 
to clip the wings of speculative intellects. At the 



144 



PALLET IOLOGY. 



hearing of rash lamentations like these, my zeal could 
not keep silence." And he then goes on to say, that 
he wishes, in his Dialogue, to show that the subject 
had been fully examined at Rome. Here the irony 
is quite transparent, and the sarcasm glaringly ob- 
vious. I think we may venture to say that this is 
not the temper in which scientific questions should 
be treated ; although by some, perhaps, the pro- 
hibition of public discussion may be considered as 
justifying any evasion which is likely to pass un- 
punished. 

12. Duty of Mutual Forbearance. — We may add, 
as a further reason for mutual forbearance in such 
cases, that the true interests of both parties are the 
same. The man of science is concerned, no less 
than any other person, in the truth and import of 
the divine dispensation ; the religious man, no less 
than the man of science, is, by the nature of his 
intellect, incapable of believing two contradictory 
declarations. Hence they have both alike a need 
for understanding the Scripture in some way in 
which it shall be consistent with their understanding 
of nature. It is for their common advantage to con- 
ciliate, as Kepler says, the finger and the tongue 
of God, his works and his word. And they may 
find abundant reason to bear with each other, even 
if they should adopt for this purpose different inter- 
pretations, each finding one satisfactory to himself ; 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 145 



or if any one should decline employing his thoughts 
on such subjects at all. I have elsewhere* quoted 
a passage from Kepler ■(• which appears to me writ- 
ten in a most suitable spirit : " I beseech my reader 
that, not unmindful of the Divine goodness bestowed 
upon man, he do with me praise and celebrate the 
wisdom of the Creator, which I open to him from a 
more inward explication of the form of the world, 
from a searching of causes, from a detection of the 
errors of vision ; and that thus, not only in the firm- 
ness and stability of the earth may we perceive with 
gratitude the preservation of all living things in 
nature as the gift of God : but also that in its 
motion, so recondite, so admirable, we may acknow- 
ledge the wisdom of the Creator. But whoever is 
too dull to receive this science, or too weak to believe 
the Copernican system without harm to his piety, 
him, I say, I advise that, leaving the school of astro- 
nomy, and condemning, if so he please, any doctrines 
of the philosophers, he follow his own path, and 
desist from this wandering through the universe ; 
and that, lifting up his natural eyes, with which 
alone he can see, he pour himself out from his own 
heart in worship of God the Creator, being certain 
that he gives no less worship to God than the 
astronomer, to whom God has given to see more 



* Bridgewater Tr. p. 314. 



+ Com. Stell. Mart. Introd. 

7 



146 



PALtETIOLOGY. 



clearly with his inward eyes, and who, from what 
he has himself discovered, both can and will glorify 
God." 

13. Case of Galileo — I may perhaps venture 
here to make a remark or two upon this subject 
with reference to a charge brought against a cer- 
tain portion of the History of the Inductive Sciences. 
(p. 2 of this). Complaint has been made* that the 
character of the Roman church, as shown in its 
behaviour towards Galileo, is misrepresented in the 
account given of it in the History of Astronomy. It 
is asserted that Galileo provoked the condemnation 
he incurred ; first, by pertinaciously demanding the 
assent of the ecclesiastical authorities to his opinion 
of the consistency of the Copernican doctrine with 
Scripture ; and afterwards by contumaciously, and, as 
we have seen, contumeliously violating the silence 
which the Church had enjoined upon him. It is further 
declared that the statement which represents it as 
the habit of the Roman church to dogmatize on 
points of natural science is unfounded ; as well as the 
opinion that in consequence of this habit, new scien- 
tific truths were promulgated less boldly in Italy 
than in other countries. I shall reply very briefly 
on these subjects ; for the decision of them is by no 
means requisite in order to establish the doctrines 



* Dublin Review, No. ix. July, 1838. p. 72. 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 147 



to which I have been led in the present chapter, nor, 
I hope, to satisfy my reader that my views have been 
collected from an impartial consideration of scientific 
history. 

With regard to Galileo, I do not think it can 
be denied that he obtruded his opinions upon the 
ecclesiastical authorities in an unnecessary and im- 
prudent manner. He was of an ardent character, 
strongly convinced himself, and urged on still more 
by the conviction which he produced among his 
disciples, and thus he became impatient for the 
triumph of truth. This judgment of him has recently 
been delivered by various independent authorities, 
and has undoubtedly considerable foundation*. As 
to the question whether authority in matters of 
natural science were habitually claimed by the 
authorities of the Church of Rome, I have to allow 
that I cannot produce instances which establish such 
a habit. We who have been accustomed to have 
daily before our eyes the Monition which the Romish 
editors of Newton thought it necessary to prefix — 
Cceterum latis a summo Pontifice contra telluris motum 

* Besides the Dublin Review, I may quote the Edinburgh Review, 
which I suppose will not be thought likely to have a bias in favour of 
the exercise of ecclesiastical authority in matters of science : " Galileo 
contrived to surround the truth with every variety of obstruction. The 
tide of knowledge, which had hitherto advanced in peace, he crested 
with angry breakers, and he involved in its surf both his friends and 
his foes."— Ed. Rev. No. cxxiii. p. 126. 

7—2 



148 



PAL.ETIOLOGY. 



Decretis, nos obsequi profitemur — were not likely to 
conjecture that this was a solitary instance of the 
interposition of the Papal authority on such sub- 
jects. But although it would be easy to find 
declarations of heresy delivered by Romish Univer- 
sities, and writers of great authority, against tenets 
belonging to the natural sciences, I am not aware 
that any other case can be adduced in which the 
Church or the Pope can be shown to have pro- 
nounced such a sentence. I am well contented to 
acknowledge this ; for I should be far more grati- 
fied by finding myself compelled to hold up the 
seventeeth century as a model for the nineteenth in 
this respect, than by having to sow enmity between 
the admirers of the past and the present through 
any disparaging contrast*. 

With respect to the attempt made in my 
History to characterize the intellectual habits of 
Italy as produced by her religious condition,. — 
certainly it would ill become any student of the 
history of science to speak slightingly of that coun- 
try, always the mother of sciences, always ready to 



* I may add that the most candid of the adherents of the Church 
of Rome condemn the assumption of authority in matters of science, 
made, in this one instance at least, by the ecclesiasticel tribunals. The 
author of the Ages of Faith (Book viii. p. 248), says, " A Congrega- 
tion, it is to be lamented, declared the new system to be opposed to 
Scripture, and therefore heretical." 



RELATION OF TRADITION THERETO. 149 



catch the dawn and hail the rising of any new light 
of knowledge. But I think our admiration of this 
activity and acuteness of mind is by no means in- 
consistent with the opinion, that new truths were 
promulgated more boldly beyond the Alps, and that 
the subtilty of the Italian intellect loved to insinuate 
what the rough German bluntly asserted. Of the 
decent duplicity with which forbidden opinions were 
handled, the reviewer himself gives us instances, 
when he boasts of the liberality with which Coper- 
nican professors were placed in important stations by 
the ecclesiastical authorities, soon after the doctrine 
of the motion of the earth had been declared by the 
same authorities contrary to Scripture. And in the 
same spirit is the process of demanding from Galileo 
a public and official recantation of opinions which 
he had repeatedly been told by his ecclesiastical 
superiors he might hold as much as he pleased. I 
think it is easy to believe that among persons so 
little careful to reconcile public profession with pri- 
vate conviction, official decorum was all that was 
demanded. When Galileo had made his renunciation 
of the earth's motion on his knees, he rose and said, 
as we are told, E pur si muove — " and yet it does 
move." This is sometimes represented as the heroic 
soliloquy of a mind cherishing its conviction of the 
truth, in spite of persecution ; I think we may more 
naturally conceive it uttered as a playful epigram 



150 



PALtETIOLOGY. 



in the ear of a cardinal's secretary, with a full know- 
ledge that it would be immediately repeated to his 
master. 

Besides the Ideas involved in the material 
sciences, of which we have already examined the 
principle ones, there is one Idea or Conception 
which our Sciences do not indeed include, but to 
which they not obscurely point ; and the importance 
of this Idea will make it proper to speak of it, 
though this must be done very briefly. 

OF THE CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 

1. At the end of the last chapter (p. 122), we 
were led to this result, — that we cannot, in any 
of the Palaetiological Sciences, ascend to a begin- 
ning which is of the same nature as the existing 
cause of events, and which depends upon causes 
that are still in operation. Philosophers never 
have demonstrated, and probably never will be able 
to demonstrate, what was the original condition of 
the solar system, of the earth, of the vegetable 
and animal worlds, of languages, of arts. On all 
these subjects the course of investigation, followed 
backwards as far as our materials allow us to 
pursue it, ends at last in an impenetrable gloom. 
We strain our eyes in vain when we try, by our 
natural faculties, to discern an Origin. 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 



151 



2. Yet speculative men have been constantly 
employed in attempts to arrive at that which thus 
seems to be placed out of their reach. The Origin 
of Languages, the Origin of the present Distri- 
bution of Plants and Animals, the Origin of the 
Earth, have been common subjects of diligent and 
persevering inquiry. Indeed inquiries respecting 
such subjects have been, at least till lately, the 
usual form which Palsetiological researches have as- 
sumed. Cosmogony, the origin of the world, of 
which, in such speculations, the earth was con- 
sidered as a principal part, has been a favourite 
study both of ancient and of modern times: and most 
of the attempts at Geology previous to the pre- 
sent period have been Cosmogonies or Gwgomes, 
rather than that more genuine science which we 
have endeavoured to delineate. Glossology, though 
now an extensive body of solid knowledge, was 
mainly brought into being by inquiries concerning 
the original language spoken by men ; and the 
nature of the first separation and diffusion of lan- 
guages, the first peopling of the earth by man 
and by animals, were long sought after with ardent 
curiosity, although of course with reference to the 
authority of the Scriptures, as well as the evidence 
of natural phenomena. Indeed the interest of such 
inquiries even yet is far from being extinguished. 
The disposition to explore the past in the hope 



152 



PAL^TIOLOGY. 



of finding, by the light of natural reasoning as 
well as by the aid of revelation, the origin of the 
present course of things, appears to be unconquer- 
able. What was the beginning ? is a question which 
the human race cannot desist from perpetually 
asking. And no failure in obtaining a satisfactory 
answer can prevent inquisitive spirits from again 
and again repeating the inquiry, although the blank 
abyss into which it is uttered does not even return 
an echo. 

3. What, then, is the reason of an attempt 
so pertinacious yet so fruitless? By what motive 
are we impelled thus constantly to seek what we 
can never find? Why are the error of our con- 
jectures, the futility of our reasonings, the preca- 
riousness of our interpretations, over and over again 
proved to us in vain ? Why is it impossible for 
us to acquiesce in our ignorance and to relinquish 
the inquiry? Why cannot we content ourselves 
with examining those links of the chain of causes 
which are nearest to us ; — those in which the con- 
nexion is intelligible and clear; instead of fixing 
our attention upon those remote portions where 
we can no longer estimate its coherence ? In short, 
why did not men from the first take for the 
subject of their speculations the Course, of Nature 
rather than the Origin of Things? 

To this we reply, that in doing what they 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 



153 



have thus done, in seeking what they have sought, 
men are impelled by an intellectual necessity. They 
cannot conceive a series of connected occurrences 
without a commencement ; they cannot help sup- 
posing a cause for the whole, as well as a cause 
for each part ; they cannot be satisfied with a suc- 
cession of causes without assuming a First Cause. 
Such an assumption is necessarily impressed upon 
our minds by our contemplation of a series of 
causes and effects ; that there must be a First Cause, 
is accepted by all intelligent reasoners as an Axiom: 
and like other Axioms, its truth is necessarily im- 
plied in the Idea which it involves. 

4. The evidence of this axiom may be illus- 
trated in several ways. In the first place, the 
axiom is assumed in the argument usually offered 
to prove the existence of the Deity. Since, it is 
said, the world now exists, and since nothing can- 
not produce something, something must have ex- 
isted from eternity. This Something is the First 
Cause : it is God. 

Now what I have to remark here is this : the 
conclusiveness of this argument, as a proof of the 
existence of one independent, immutable Deity, de- 
pends entirely upon the assumption of the axiom 
above stated. The world, a series of causes and 
effects, exists: therefore there must be, not only 
this series of causes and effects, but also a First 

7—5 



154 



TALM TIOLOGY. 



Cause. It will be easily seen, that without the 
axiom, that in every series of causes and effects 
there must be a First Cause, the reasoning is alto- 
gether inconclusive. 

5. Or to put the matter otherwise : The argu- 
ment for the existence of the Deity was stated 
thus : Something exists, therefore something must 
have existed from eternity. Granted, the opponent 
might say ; but this something which has existed 
from eternity, why may it not be this very series 
of causes and effects which is now going on, and 
which appears to contain in itself no indication of 
beginning or end ? And thus, without the assump- 
tion of the necessity of a First Cause, the force 
of the argument may be resisted. 

6. But, it may be asked, how do those who 
have written to prove the existence of the Deity 
reply to such an objection as the one just stated \ 
It is natural to suppose that, on a subject so inter- 
esting and • so long discussed, all the obvious argu- 
ments, with their replies, have been fully brought 
into view. What is the result in this case? 

The principal modes of replying to the above 
objection, that the series of causes and effects which 
now exists, may have existed from eternity, appear 
to be these. 

In the first place, our minds cannot be satis- 
fied with a series of successive, dependent, causes 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 



155 



and effects, without something first and indepen- 
dent. We pass from effect to cause, and from 
that to a higher cause, in search of something on 
which the mind can rest ; but if we can do nothing 
but repeat this process, there is no use in it. We 
move our limbs, but make no advance. Our ques- 
tion is not answered, but evaded. The mind can- 
not acquiesce in the destiny thus presented to it, 
of being referred from event to event, from object 
to object, along an interminable vista of causation 
and time. Now this mode of stating the reply, — 
to say that the mind cannot thus be satisfied, ap- 
pears to be equivalent to saying that the mind 
is conscious of a principle in virtue of which such 
a view as this must be rejected; — the mind takes 
refuge in the assumption of a First Cause, from 
an employment inconsistent with its own nature. 

7. Or again, we may avoid the objection, by 
putting the argument for the existence of a Deity 
in this form : The series of causes and effects which 
we call the world, or the course of nature, may 
be considered as a whole, and this whole must have 
a cause of its existence. The whole collection of 
objects and events may be comprehended as a 
single effect, and of this effect there must be a 
cause. This Cause of the Universe must be supe- 
rior to, and independent of the special events, which, 



156 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



happening in time, make up the universe of which 
He is the cause. He must exist and exercise 
causation, before these events can begin : He must 
be the First Cause. 

Although the argument is here somewhat modi- 
fied in form, the substance is the same as before. 
For the assumption that we may consider the whole 
series of causes and effects as a single effect, is 
equivalent to the assumption that besides partial 
causes, we must have a First Cause. And thus 
the Idea of a First Cause, and the axiom which 
asserts its necessity, are recognized in the usual 
argumentation on this subject. 

8. This Idea of a First Cause, and the prin- 
ciple involved in the Idea, have been the subject 
of discussion in another manner. As we have 
already said, we assume as an axiom that a First 
Cause must exist ; and we assert that God, the 
First Cause, exists eternal and immutable, by the 
necessity which the axiom implies. Hence God is 
said to exist necessarily; — to be a necessarily ex- 
isting being. And when this necessary existence 
of God had been spoken of, it soon began to be 
contemplated as a sufficient reason, and as an abso- 
lute demonstration of His existence ; without any 
need of referring to the world as an effect, in 
order to arrive at God as the cause. And thus 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 1 57 

men conceived that they had obtained a proof of 
the existence of the Deity, a priori, from ideas, 
as well as a posteriori, from effects. 

9. Thus, Thomas Aquinas employs this reason- 
ing to prove the eternity of God*. " Oportet ponere 
aliquod primum necessarium quod est per se ipsum 
necessarium ; et hoc est Deus, cum sit prima causa 
ut dictum est : igitur Deus seternus est, cum omne 
necessarium per se sit seternum." It is true that 
the schoolmen never professed to be able to prove 
the existence of the Deity a priori: but they made 
use of this conception of necessary existence in a 
manner which approached very near to such an 
attempt. Thus Suarez-f- discusses the question, 
" Utrum aliquo modo possit a priori demonstrari 
Deum esse." And resolves the question in this 
manner : " Ad hunc ergo modum dicendum est : 
Demonstrate a posteriori Deum esse ens necessarium 
et a se, ex hoc attributo posse a priori demon- 
strari prseter illud non posse eese aliud ens neces- 
sarium et a se, et consequenter demonstrari Deum 
esse." 

But in modern times attempts were made by 
Descartes and Samuel Clarke, to prove the Divine 
existence at once a priori, from the conception of 



* Aquin. Contr. Gentil. Lib. i. Chap. xiv. p. 21. 
t Metaphys. Tom. n. Disp. xxix. Sect. 3. p. 28. 



158 



PAL^TIOLOGY. 



necessary existence ; which, it was argued, could 
not subsist without actual existence. This argu- 
mentation was acutely and severely criticized by 
Dr. Waterland. 

10. Without dwelling upon a subject, the dis- 
cussion of which does not enter into the design of 
the present work, I may remark that the question 
whether an a priori proof of the existence of a 
First Cause be possible, is a question concerning 
the nature of our Ideas, and the evidence of the 
axioms which they involve, of the same kind as 
many questions which we have already had to dis- 
cuss. Is our Conception or Idea of a First Cause 
gathered from the effects we see around us? It 
is plain that we must answer, here as in other 
cases, that the Idea is not extracted from the 
phenomena, but assumed in order that the phe- 
nomena may become intelligible to the mind; — 
that the Idea is a necessary one, inasmuch as it 
does not depend upon observation for its evidence ; 
but that it depends upon observation for its de- 
velopement, since without some observation, we can- 
not conceive the mind to be cognisant of the rela- 
tion of causation at all. In this respect, how- 
ever, the Idea of a First Cause is no less necessary 
than the ideas of Space, or Time, or Cause in 
general. And whether we call the reasoning de- 
rived from such a necessity an argument a priori 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 159 



or a posteriori, in either case it possesses the genuine 
character of demonstration, being founded upon 
axioms which command universal assent. 

11. I have, however, spoken of our Conception 
rather than of our Idea of a First Cause ; for the 
notion of a First Cause appears to be rather a 
modification of the Fundamental Idea of Cause, 
which was formerly discussed, than a separate and 
peculiar Idea. And the Axiom, that there must be 
a First Cause, is recognized by most persons as 
an application of the general Axiom of Causation, 
that every effect must ham a cause ; this latter Axiom 
being applied to the world, considered in its totality, 
as a single effect. This distinction, however, be- 
tween an Idea and a Conception, is of no material 
consequence to our argument; provided we allow 
the maxim, that there must be a First Cause, to 
be necessarily and evidently true ; whether it be 
thought better to speak of it as an independent 
Axiom, or to consider it as derived from the general 
Axiom of Causation. 

12. Thus we necessarily infer a First Cause, 
although the Palsetiological Sciences only point to- 
wards it, and do not lead to it. But I must observe 
further ; that in each of the series of events which 
form the subject of Palaetiological research, the 
First Cause is the same. Without here resting 
upon reasoning founded upon our Conception of 



160 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



a First Cause, I may remark that this identity is 
proved by the close connexion of all the branches 
of natural science, and the way in which the causes 
and the events of each are interwoven with "those 
which belong to the others. We must needs be- 
lieve that the First Cause which produced the earth 
and its atmosphere is also the Cause of the plants 
which clothe its surface; that the First Cause of 
the vegetable and of the animal world are the 
same ; that the First Cause which produced light 
produced also eyes ; that the First Cause which 
produced air and organs of articulation produced 
also language and the faculties by which language is 
rendered possible : and if those faculties, then also all 
man's other faculties; — the powers by which , as we 
have said, he discerns right and wrong, and recog- 
nizes a providential as well as a natural course of 
things. Nor can we think otherwise than that the 
Being who gave these faculties, bestowed them for 
some purpose; — bestowed them for that purpose 
which alone is compatible with their nature : — the 
purpose, namely, of guiding and elevating man in his 
present career, and of preparing him for another state 
of being to which they irresistibly direct his hopes. 
And thus, although, as we have said, no one of the 
Palsetiological Sciences can be traced continuously 
to an origin, yet they not only each point to an 
origin, but all to the same origin. Their lines are 



CONCEPTION OF A FIRST CAUSE. 



161 



broken indeed, as they run backwards into the early 
periods of the world, but yet they all appear 
to converge to the same invisible point. And this 
point, thus indicated by the natural course of things, 
can be no other than that which is disclosed to 
us as the starting point of the providential course 
of the world ; for we are persuaded by such rea- 
sons as have just been hinted, that the Creator 
of the natural world can be no other than the 
Author and Governor and Judge of the moral and 
spiritual world. 

13. Thus we are led, by our material sciences, 
and especially by the Palsetiological class of them, 
to the borders of a higher region, and to a point 
of view from which we have a prospect of other 
provinces of knowledge, in which other faculties of 
man are concerned besides his intellectual, other 
interests involved besides those of speculation. On 
these it does not belong to our present plan to dwell : 
but even such a brief glance as we have taken of 
the connexion of material with moral speculations 
may not be useless, since it may serve to show 
that the principles of truth which we are now labo- 
riously collecting among the results of the physical 
sciences, may possibly find some application in those 
parts of knowledge towards which men most natu- 
rally look with deeper interest and more serious 
reverence. 



162 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 

The first Induction of a Cause does not close 
the business of scientific inquiry. Behind proximate 
causes, there are ulterior causes, perhaps a succes- 
sion of such. Gravity is the cause of the motions 
of the planets ; but what is the cause of gravity ? 
This is a question which has occupied men's minds 
from the time of Newton to the present day. Earth- 
quakes and volcanoes are the causes of many geolo- 
gical phenomena; but what is the cause of those 
subterraneous operations ? This inquiry after ulterior 
causes is an inevitable result from the intellectual 
constitution of man. He discovers mechanical 
causes, but he cannot rest in them. He must needs 
ask, whence it is that matter has its universal power 
of attracting matter. He discovers polar forces : but 
even if these be universal, he still desires a fur- 
ther insight into the cause of this polarity. He 
sees, in organic structures, convincing marks of 
adaptation to an end : whence, he asks, is this adap- 
tation ? He traces in the history of the earth a 
chain of causes and effects operating through time : 
but what, he inquires, is the power which holds 
the end of this chain ? 

Thus we are referred back from step to step, 
in the order of causation, in the same manner as, 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 



163 



in the paketiological sciences, we were referred back 
in the order of time. We make discovery after 
discovery in the various regions of science ; each, 
it may be, satisfactory, and in itself complete, but 
none final. Something always remains undone. 
The last question answered, the answer suggests 
still another question. The strain of music from 
the lyre of Science flows on, rich and sweet, full 
and harmonious, but never reaches a close : no 
cadence is heard with which the intellectual ear 
can feel satisfied. 

In the utterance of Science, no cadence is 
heard with which the human mind can feel satisfied. 
Yet we cannot but go on listening for and expect- 
ing a satisfactory close. The notion of a cadence 
appears to be essential to our relish of the music. 
The idea of some closing strain seems to lurk 
among our own thoughts, waiting to be articulated 
in the notes which flow from the knowledge of 
external nature. The idea of something ultimate 
in our philosophical researches, something in 
which the mind can acquiesce, and which will leave 
us no further questions to ask, of whence, and 
why, and by tohat power, seems as if it belonged 
to us ; — as if we could not have it withheld from 
us by any imperfection or incompleteness in the 
actual performances of science. What is the mean- 



164 



PALjETIOLOGY. 



ing of this conviction? What is the reality thus 
anticipated ? Whither does the development of this 
Idea conduct us? 

We have already seen that a difficulty of the 
same kind, which arises in the contemplation of 
causes and effects considered as forming an histo- 
rical series, drives us to the assumption of a First 
Cause, as an Axiom to which our Idea of Causation 
in time necessarily leads. And as we were thus 
guided to a First Cause in order of Succession, 
the same kind of necessity directs us to a Supreme 
Cause in order of Causation. 

On this most weighty subject it is difficult to 
speak fitly ; and the present is not the proper occa- 
sion, even for most of that which may be said. But 
there are one or two remaks which flow from the 
general train of the contemplations we have been 
engaged in, and with which this Work must con- 
clude. 

We have seen how different are the kinds of 
cause to which we are led by scientific researches. 
Mechanical Forces are insufficient without Chemical 
Affinities; Chemical agencies fail us, and we are 
compelled to have recourse to Vital Powers ; Vital 
Powers cannot be merely physical, and we must 
believe in something hyperphysical, something of the 
nature of a Soul. Not only do biological inquiries 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 



165 



lead us to assume an animal soul, but they drive 
us much further; they bring before us Perception, 
and Will evoked by Perception. Still more, these 
inquiries disclose to us Ideas as the necessary forms 
of Perception, in the actions of which we ourselves 
are conscious. We are aware, we cannot help being 
aware, of our Ideas and our Volitions as belonging 
to us, and thus we pass from things to persons ; we 
have the idea of Personality awakened. And the 
idea of Design and Purpose, of which we are con- 
scious in our own minds, we find reflected back to 
us, with a distinctness which we cannot overlook, 
in all the arrangements which constitute the frame 
of organized beings. 

We cannot but reflect how widely diverse are 
the kinds of principles thus set before us ; — by 
what vast strides we mount from the lower to the 
higher, as we proceed through that series of causes 
which the range of the sciences thus brings under 
our notice. Yet we know how narrow is the range 
of these sciences when compared with the whole 
extent of human knowledge. We cannot doubt 
that on many other subjects, besides those included 
in physical speculation, man has made out solid 
and satisfactory trains of connexion ; — has discovered 
clear and indisputable evidence of causation. It is 
manifest, therefore, that, if we are to attempt to 
ascend to the Supreme Cause — if we are to try 



166 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



to frame an idea of the Cause of all these sub- 
ordinate causes ; — we must conceive it as more dif- 
ferent from any of them, than the most diverse are 
from each other ; — more elevated above the highest, 
than the highest is above the lowest. 

But further ; — though the Supreme Cause must 
thus be inconceivably different from all subordinate 
causes, and immeasurably elevated above them all, 
it must still include in itself all that is essential 
to each of them, by virtue of that very circum- 
stance that it is the Cause of their Causality. Time 
and space, — Infinite Time and Infinite Space, — 
must be among its attributes; for we cannot but 
conceive Infinite Time and Space as attributes of 
the Infinite Cause of the Universe. Force and 
Matter must depend upon it for their efficacy ; for 
we cannot conceive the activity of Force, or the 
resistance of Matter, to be independent powers. 
But these are its lower attributes. The Vital 
Powers, the Animal Soul, which are the Causes of 
the actions of living things, are only the Effects of 
the Supreme Cause of Life. And this Cause, even 
in the lowest forms of organized bodies, and still 
more in those which stand higher in the scale, in- 
volves a reference to Ends and Purposes, in short, 
to manifest Final Causes. Since this is so, and 
since, even when we contemplate ourselves in a 
view studiously narrowed, we still find that we have 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 



167 



Ideas, and Will and Personality, it would render 
our philosophy utterly incoherent and inconsistent 
with itself, to suppose that Personality, and Ideas, 
and Will, and Purpose, do not belong to the Su- 
preme Cause from which we derive all that we have 
and all that we are. 

But we may go a step further ; — though, in 
our present field of speculation, we confine our- 
selves to knowledge founded on the facts which 
the external world presents to us, we cannot for- 
get, in speaking of such a theme as that to which 
we have thus been led, that these are but a small, 
and the . least significant portion of the facts which 
bear upon it. We cannot fail to recollect that 
there are facts belonging to the world within us, 
which more readily and strongly direct our thoughts 
to the Supreme Cause of all things. We can 
plainly discern that we have Ideas elevated above 
the region of mechanical causation, of animal ex- 
istence, even of mere choice and will, which still 
have a clear and definite significance, a permanent 
and indestructible validity. We perceive as a fact, 
that we have a Conscience, judging of Right and 
Wrong; that we have Ideas of Moral Good and 
Evil; that we are compelled to conceive the orga- 
nization of the moral world, as well as of the vital 
frame, to be directed to an end and governed by 
a purpose. And since the Supreme Cause is the 



168 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



cause of these facts, the Origin of these Ideas, we 
cannot refuse to recognize Him as not only the 
Maker, but the Governor of the World ; as not 
only a Creative, but a Providential Power ; as not 
only a Universal Father, but an Ultimate Judge. 

We have already passed beyond the boundary of 
those speculations which we proposed to ourselves as 
the basis of our conclusions. Yet we may be allowed 
to add one other reflection. If we find in ourselves 
Ideas of Good and Evil, manifestly bestowed upon 
us to be the guides of our conduct, which guides 
we yet find it impossible consistently to obey ; — if 
we find ourselves directed, even by our natural light, 
to aim at a perfection of our moral nature from 
which we are constantly deviating through weakness 
and perverseness ; — if, when we thus lapse and err, 
we can find, in the region of Human Philosophy, 
no power which can efface our aberrations, or re- 
concile our actual with our ideal being, or give 
us any steady hope and trust with regard to our 
actions, after we have thus discovered their incon- 
gruity with their genuine standard ; — if we discern 
that this is our condition, how can we fail to see 
that it is in the highest degree consistent with all 
the indications supplied by such a philosophy as 
that of which we have been attempting to lay 
the foundations, that the Supreme Cause, through 
whom man exists as a moral being of vast capacities 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 



169 



and infinite hopes, should have Himself provided a 
Teaching for our ignorance, a Propitiation for our 
sin, a Support for our weakness, a Purification and 
Sanctification of our nature ? 

And thus, in concluding our long survey of the 
grounds and structure of Science, and of the les- 
sons which the study of it teaches us, we find our- 
selves brought to a point of view in which we can 
cordially sympathize, and more than sympathize, 
with all the loftiest expressions of admiration and 
reverence and hope and trust, which have been ut- 
tered by those who in former times have spoken 
of the elevated thoughts to which the contempla- 
tion of the nature and progress of human know- 
ledge gives rise. We can not only hold with Galen, 
and Harvey, and all the great physiologists, that 
the organs of animals give evidence of a purpose ; 
— not only assert with Cuvier that this conviction 
of a purpose can alone enable us to understand 
every part of every living thing ; — not only say 
with Newton that " every true step made in philo- 
sophy brings us nearer to the First Cause, and is 
on that account highly to be valued ; " — and that 
" the business of natural philosophy is to deduce 
causes from effects, till we come to the very First 
Cause, which certainly is not mechanical : " — but 
we can go much further, and declare, still with 

8 



170 



PALiETIOLOGY. 



Newton, that " this beautiful system . could have 
its origin no other way than by the purpose and 
command of an intelligent and powerful Being, 
who governs all things, not as the soul of the 
world, but as the Lord of the Universe ; who is 
not only God, but Lord and Governor."' 1 

When we have advanced so far, there yet re- 
mains one step. We may recollect the prayer of 
one, the Master in this School of the Philosophy of 
Science : " This also we humbly and earnestly beg ; 
— that human things may not prejudice such as 
are divine ; — neither that from the unlocking of 
the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater 
natural light, anything may arise of incredulity or 
intellectual night towards divine mysteries ; but 
rather that by our minds, thoroughly purged and 
cleansed from fancy and vanity, and yet subject 
and perfectly given up to the divine oracles, there 
may be given unto Faith the things that are Faith's." 
When we are thus prepared for a higher teaching, 
we may be ready to listen to a greater than Bacon, 
when he says to those who have sought their God 
in the material universe, " Whom ye ignorantly 
worship, Him declare I unto you." And when we 
recollect how utterly inadequate all human language 
has been shown to be, to express the nature of 
that Supreme Cause of the Natural, and Rational, 



2> 



OF THE SUPREME CAUSE. 



171 



and Moral, and Spiritual world, to which our 
Philosophy points with trembling finger and shaded 
eyes, we may receive, with the less wonder but 
with the more reverence, the declaration which has 
been vouchsafed to us : 

In the Beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God. 



THE END. 



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